Focusing Intent
August 18th, 2007
Focusing intentions into action is a very powerful act. Most of our mental energy is spent thinking how to get what we want, worrying about the past and future, anxiety about losing what we have, our relationships and shortcomings, etc. If one is able to see this from a third-party perspective, it may seem ridiculuos as it usually leads to mental anguish and no positive results. As we age, our mental baggage and negative reflection only increases with our experiences. A certain amount of thinking and pre-planning is necessary, but running the same anxieties over and over is detrimental and debilitating. Instead, if we choose to clear our head, determine a logical path, and focus our will on action, we will bring to fruit much more in life.
Easier said than done! This step is one that requires consistent awareness of thought, and to achieve this, one must practice. Like anything, it will get easier with time. At first it will be difficult, but all that is required to start this is a seed of intention. So go for a long walk, find your true calling, practice awareness, and then focus your intention on it.
On another note, I’m off to Iran for three weeks to visit family. Every time I go it’s a life-changing experience, and I’m sure this time it won’t be any different.
Peace
Neitzche and The Self
August 1st, 2007
Carrying on on The Paradox of Choice post, Arthur Schopenhauer was an influential figure on the philosophy of Neitzche:
Neitzche’s is a story of quest for truth outside the constraints of traditional religion (in his case Christianity). He managed to kill the notion of a judging God who intervenes, and replaced the vacuum with his own powerful yet suffering mind to navigate the path of life. Obsessed with the idea of overcoming the ordinary life, he advocates a free existentialism that helped plant the seeds of the ideals of freedom in Western society today. One of unlimited progress and choice, yet ultimately nihilistic, void of happiness and morality as we saw Adam Curtis videos. Neitzche advocates transcending the self, yet he attempted to achieve this through the use of the self, which creates a unique conflict of interest. His attempt to create a new system of values to replace the old was his downfall that led to madness.
How can we not fall into the trap of Neitzche’s selfish search for meaning through the self? The self can be thought of as a master that controls us, a never satisfied beast that leads only to a path of aimless wandering.
Taking it one step further, UG describes the root of this thirst:
You are interested in the self, not I. Whatever it is, it is the most important thing for man as long as he is alive. If you don’t think it never occurs to you that you are alive or dead. The very birth of thought creates fear and it is out of fear that all experience springs. Both inner and outer worlds proceed from a point of thought. Everything you experience is born out of thought.
So everything you experience or can experience is an illusion. The self-absorption in thought creates a self-centeredness in man—that is all that is there. All relationships based upon that will inevitably create misery for man. These are bogus relationships. As far as you are concerned, there is no such thing as a relationship. And yet, society demands not just relationships but permanent relationships.
-UG Krishnamurti from The Natural State
“Death Is Our Wedding With Eternity”
July 28th, 2007
There exists a fundamental desire to avoid death is in all living lifeforms. In many cultures, humans avoid the idea, and only struggle with it late in life when it looms close, when they become desperate to justify their life as worthy. In some Buddhist and Hindu practices, followers are encouraged to visualize their rotting bodies and embrace death as simply a transition of life from one form to another. Other cultures like the ancient Egyptians and countless empires past and present seek immortality through conquest and death of others. In modern news, body counts are used as a measure of how the species is doing in it’s struggle against death. Here’s a interesting trailer of a documentary that explores this idea, and the consequences of the human capability to attempt to escape the grasp of death:
Flight From Death - The Quest for Immortality (available as a rental on DVD)
The mystery of the afterlife leaves it upon the imagination what to believe. Carl Jung spoke of death as a conundrum of the psyche:
Rationalizing The Meaning of Life
July 22nd, 2007
The human brain has a amazing tendency to rationalize to keep the notion of one’s identity afloat when faced with contrary evidence or truths. If you ask a murderer or a dictator who commits crimes against humanity, they will usually see themselves as doing the “right thing.” The same goes for political and corporate leaders who become corrupted by power or greed. Many soldiers only deal with the mental horrors of their actions on duty, only after the fight. Even spirituality is not immune, from priests who sexually molest, to religious fanatics that commit bombings, to those who portray themselves as holy to gain power or money.
The mind’s rationalizing power no doubt developed as a biological mechanism to grease the gears of tribal life for our ancestors, so that they may live a less stressful life and justify actions in a social setting. But can we modern humans transcend this tendency that gets our species into so much trouble?
An interesting study was performed in the 70’s that exposes the human tendency to distort reality under social pressure:
All meaning is extracted from experience, culture, identity. Inherently, it has no truth to it. Here is an interesting map of how different people around the world have extracted their meaning of life based on their location or cultural influence:
The Ten Dimensions, Energy, and Fate
July 17th, 2007
This animation explains the ten dimensions according to string theory, which requires all ten dimensions to work out mathematically. I’ve always thought of the world as three dimensions, with time being an illusion. If all matter is vibrating energy (also covered in string theory) in a constant state of flux, and exists in eternity and infinity, that seems like a simple way to explain the reality we perceive. The placement of this matter through the third dimension is space/time, but this is merely the illusion that we live in. Matter is the container that creates an illusion of separation of this universal energy that vibrates in and out of our dimension.
When one realizes that everything is created from this source energy, that life and light is the energy that shines through the matter, then how can there be good, bad, anger, greed, or war? We’d be fighting ourselves. This reality has been realized by non-dualism and mysticim through the times:
Don’t Look For The Soul
June 28th, 2007
Meditation or emptiness of the mind is higher brain activity:
Thought to be the signature of neuronal activity that knits together far-flung brain circuits, gamma waves underlie higher mental activity such as consciousness. The novice meditators “showed a slight increase in gamma activity, but most monks showed extremely large increases of a sort that has never been reported before in the neuroscience literature”
Memory is stored all throughout the brain, not in one area, and the left and right hemispheres of the the brain have their own unique personalities and emotions, which compete for control over our actions. 3 million years of evolution has produced a highly complex thinking machine created to adapt and survive in the harshest environments. But is there more beyond the mind?
Enlightenment is often referred to as “death before death,” meaning the self/ego is killed off, and pure consciousness remains alive. Is this just turning off the higher mind functions and reverting to the hippocampus? Is this the level of consciousness we call the “soul”? Just that fact that we can turn off the memories that make up the mind through meditation means a true perceiver exists, one which is aware of all our thinking and actions, but remains silently watching. This awareness is pure energy, infinite, alive, and outside the notions of time or self.
If one searches for this awareness, it can not be found, for effort originates from the mind, and the mind is limited to grasping reality only through the use of memory or imagination. The awareness can see it’s own reflection, without the mind searching for it, by waiting for the mind to gently become still. This state is the foundation of spirituality - for example the root of the word Islam means surrender - as in surrendering to the state of peace outside the thinking mind, and the root of the name Buddha means awakening - as in awakening to a state outside the ego. Only when the mind isn’t looking for the soul does one find it.
How to Loose Knowledge
June 19th, 2007
Often, the smartest people with the most analytical brains packed full of knowledge have the hardest time letting go of their ideas of the world that keep them from experiencing truth. These are the ideas that are inherently meaningless and empty at a spiritual level, since they filter truth through identity, culture, and ego. There is a deep thirst stemming from this search for knowledge and truth, that can only be satisfied when one lets go of all ideas of reality, not by seeking “more.”
The paradox is a certain amount of deep analytical thinking is often required before one can realize the futility of searching for meaning or peace through logic. One must first learn, realize the futility, and then unlearn everything (the hardest to do when you “know” something). The mind has to have enough information about the world, to see it’s own desperate selfish state, then choose to self-destruct.
This path is not about escapism from reality, it’s about finding peace by realizing the true reality of life, free from the self’s meaningless perspective.
