Causal Illusion

The causal illusion has led us to believe instead of live. Contrary to popular opinion, beliefs are the main causes of blindness and death. We all tell ourselves that we are lacking, incomplete, and flawed. We have conjured up thousands of years of traditions of gods, goddesses, prophets, rabbis, mullahs, martyrs, gurus, sages, mages and mystics to hammer the point that we are separate and if we follow this or that path, pray this prayer, move this move and chant these words, that God will then accept us, make us whole, save us from hell and take us to heaven. Because we are convinced that God is separate from us.

We believe that we have soiled God’s plan and have separated ourselves from the great and powerful OZ that scares children and smokes and thunders behind the curtain. This angry, vengeful deity is a projection of our own accepted guilt. This is representational of the folly that we follow without question, because we have not questioned the questions. We are blind, not because we do not have eyes, but because we have covered our eyes with our own lies that we believe to be true. We have bought into the causal world and have been fatally affected by our own hubris.

We do not have to do anything special — pray, meditate, contort our bodies and deceive our deception through affirmations and proclamations. Doing just leads to more doing.

However, sing, chant, meditate, pose and retreat. But knowing that the outcome of all these activities will not be for what you are searching. For example, as a dear friend once said, “silent retreats do not involve silence and they do not involve retreat”. The object of your search is the first clue that searching for objects is truly objectionable and a waste of time.

The Holy Grail — the object of our highest aspirations and noble search for truth, justice, freedom, love, compassion — whatever, are merely phantom images that cannot incorporate or resolve. The idea or form of the Divine is idolatry at its very core. The idols that dull our eyes and obscure our perception are what we have formed as barriers that are intricately designed to distract us from “tat tvam asi” thou art that. What we truly are cannot change. Everything else is not worth mentioning.

So why write, blog, or slog about such matters if they do not matter? Sometimes the most absurd and obscure reflections in life’s mirror, remind us of our true Self, the Mind-less-mind, the Me-less-me. We are all reminders of What that has never forgotten about us. All of us are one of us and none of us exist. So, I mutter and pray that we remember.

Asking the Wrong Questions by Dogo Barry Graham

Many of us want someone else to help us, to save us, to take away our suffering, our fear and uncertainty. No one can do that. Many of us realize that, and so we think we need to help ourselves. No one can do that, either.

So, if no one else can help us, and we can't help ourselves, what can we do? Are we doomed to suffer?

Our suffering cannot end until we stop fixating on the wrong questions. Who can help me? How can I help myself? These are questions that don't even begin to address the problem (or what we think is a problem).

Questions that might be more useful:

Who is this that wants to be helped?

Who is this that wants to help himself?

Who is this that thinks she has a problem?

Who am I without the belief that I have a problem?

Tanka-Verse

Playing on the shore
along side the self
the imaginary friend
the self cented dream
flowing by unaware

Resistance is Futile?by Muttering Madzub

Resistance is Futile? by Muttering Madzub

My human self resisting, insisting
Yammers on and on and on,
Perpetually relentless, pointless, noise
feeding on, holding on to its own nonexistence
Thoughts of self and self-centered delusion
Clutter the environment of Being

The Borg of chaotic humming mind voices
recite the futility mantra with finality and certainty
obscuring attention, distracting, attracting,
detracting from Being and compassion,
propagating, cloning thought zombies
suck life-force and disseminate suffering.

The battle for Mind is elusive and illusive
Narcissistic self, loves to engage in pointless battles
to achieve imagined victories
from image-nations, and hoards of inner demons
Attention is the vorpal blade
That slays the “Jabberwock”* “with eyes of flame”.*

Fear used by imagined self
creates a milieu of morass
Fetters of phantasms dissolve
when attention’s light
pierces darkened enslavement
to self that does not exist

The “Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”?**
fear has no self to fear
self has no self to fear
self has no fear to fear
no existence to protect or project
no dots to connect

Can’t figure it out
Deduce, produce, induce…perhaps seduce?
Machinations of meanings meted out ad nauseum
Puking out explanations of self infatuation
No out to figure, no figure to out
Just attention to moment being

“Being just this moment, compassion’s way.”***

* JABBERWOCKY, Lewis Carroll
(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

**“Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”: FDR’s First Inaugural Address
*** Joko Beck

There is No Spoon

There is No Spoon*


There is no Spoon.

Looking to bend perceived reality
Light and darkness ebbs and flows.
Knowing, unknowing.
Shadows revealed and light concealed.

What hides in the shadows of self?
What will light reveal?
Is darkness the womb of potential un-manifest?

What do I fear from the mirror?
Do I bend or am I bent?

As I sit and observe the morphing and meandering
The still point, dynamic stillness reveals
There is no spoon.

The question that haunts me is…
How do I eat the ice cream…?
Perhaps there is no ice cream.
Just my luck.

So what’s the point?
No spoon. No ice cream…
They told me there would be ice cream!!!

It can’t beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!
(It never is.)

What’s the point?

The point is the point.
The key is the key.
The me is you and the you me.

Reflections and refractions
from the myriad faceted jewel in the lotus.
Glinting and gleaming
Light streaming.
Darkness revealing the hidden gems
as light pours upon the mountains in dawn's radiance.

The water from the deep well
Springing forth in the oasis between time and space.

Juxtaposition-al concurrent consciousness
Caressing, kissing the wounds of living and dying.
Breaking the alabaster jar so the fragrant balm can be wasted soothing the master’s feet.

Love dogs howling longing for the return of the master.**
Come, come whoever you are,
Wanderers, worshippers lovers of leaving…**

I come as I am for there is no spoon.
Darkness – light, good – evil. Death – Birth – Rebirth.

Perhaps what we see is not what we see at all?
The seeing is in being, not the seeking or the sought.

Minding.

What do I fear in the mirror?
What do I want to see?
What do I expect to see?
What is me?

Am I the monster, the tyrant the tormentor?
Am I the darkness, the evil, obscurer and bringer of death?
Am I the demon, the devil, the enemy?
Am I the light, the truth, peace, love, harmony and beauty?
I am?

I AM!

There is no spoon.

Shadows longing for luminance.
Lies and truths revealed.
Shame and shadow?
Light and love?
Longing and leaving?
Dying and grieving?
No spoon.

Until I invite my demons to dinner,
I can’t begin the feast.
The angels are already there,
and there is no spoon.


"Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon boy: Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself."*





*from The Matrix http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/quotes
** Rumi