living

September 30, 2013 Quote

QOTD Ken Wilber

QOTD Ken Wilber*Source

September 30, 2013

The Real World: Attending To The Here And Now

This is the typical human problem. The object of dread may not be an operation in the immediate future. It may be the problem of next month’s rent, of a threatened war or social disaster, of being able to save enough for old age, or of death at the last. This ‘spoiler of the present’ may not even be a future dread. It may be something out of the past, some memory of an injury, some crime or indiscretion, which haunts the present with a sense of resentment or guilt. The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings the past and the future are not as real, but more real than the present. The present cannot be lived happily unless the past has been ‘cleared up’ and the future is bright with promise.

There can be no doubt that the power to remember and predict, to make an ordered sequence out of a helter-skelter chaos of disconnected moments, is a wonderful development of sensitivity. In a way it is the achievement of the human brain, giving man the most extraordinary powers of survival and adaptation to life. But the way in which we generally use this power is apt to destroy all its advantages. For it is of little use to us to be able to remember and predict if it makes us unable to live fully in the present.

What is the use of planning to be able to eat next week unless I can really enjoy the meals when they come? If I am so busy planning how to eat next week that I cannot fully enjoy what I am eating now, I will be in the same predicament when next week’s meals become ‘now.’

If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.

~Alan Watts

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December 22, 2012

The Cost Of Living

The future is a dimension of possibilities–

Out Of Time The Realm Of MeditationI don’t think we think about cost anymore, which is ironic isn’t it? A socialized civilization that has as its sole means a standardized value measurement system (read: currency AKA money) regards any and everything through numerical denomination $1, $5, $10, $20, . . .  Dollars. Money. The green stuff. Money seems like a pantheon god at whose feet all gather for possession of the slightest farthing afforded them.

So cost. The price of goods and services, or as it also known human resources. Human resources. A system that creates the necessity of standing in line and occupying waiting rooms. Is this a waste of time only when the time could be spent spending it on some other civilized activity? Does our time cost? What costs time? Do we ever really stop to think about that question?

Often an idea, a concept, a prepackaged bit of data is surreptitiously installed into innocuous places. Benefits of the effort at being obvious. It goes unnoticed, like language. Any language. It doesn’t matter, data has no language built in, so it can be transacted into anyone. The process remains the same. A phrase like spending time. How do you spend your time? Don’t we also spend money? Is time expensive? Sometimes, we want to buy time. Can you use credit for that? Could you layaway time? What’s your monthly budget on time? It seems weird, doesn’t it, yet that is how we communicate.

So cost. When the sole exchange used for everyday transaction is used as a currency (think: flowing stream. Think: ocean current. Imagine an electrical circuit current), what is the cost of living? What is the cost of time? Should we measure cost in time rather than dollars? How much does time cost? And how much time does it cost? If we did measure cost in time, would we value time more? Would our whole system of values change? Would we spend less time doing things we hate for more time doing things we love?

“Time keeps on slipping into the future. . .” ~Steve Miller, Fly Like An Eagle

Life is not measured in dollars it is measured by the consciousness, the mind, by nature. There is no price to pay with free living. It’s why I lived outside, why I slept on the ground in the woods beneath the starscape. To me, a conscious life is priceless. A consciousness needs it to exist healthy, to exist in union with the universe. From the quantum to the “edge” of the universe. I exist. I live consciously. I offer no excuse and ask for none.

How do you value you?

*Image credit: “Out of Time, The Realm of Meditation” by Cornelia Kopp

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December 3, 2012

Thou Art God

“Thou art God, and I am God and all that groks is God.” ~A Stranger In A Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein

Thou Art GodI was reading about chakras, and in doing so I come across the third eye crown chakra, which leads to the pineal gland which leads to melatonin . At melatonin, I find out that this is the chemical that regulates sleep patterns/cycles (circadian rhythms), which makes me wonder: What does that say about the waking state and the dream state? Give me your hand. Follow me, Alice, as we travel down the rabbit hole of a tangent….

We have wondered for millennia why do humans dream, yes? And we have wondered what is the dream state either in contrast to the waking state or in contrast to nothing. What is the dream state? And is that state when we are immersed in it, a reality? We, when we are asleep, seem to accept it as such (unless, of course, we are lucid dreaming, which is a whole other tangent, because we could say that the lucid state within the dream state is not unlike the waking state within reality, yes?). Melatonin also regulates the oscillations of the body, harmonizing with the surrounding environment so that the mind/brain can enter into the trance/dream state without any problems. How is this not unlike meditation, or even deep meditation?

Why do we still dream? Dreams as they are currently known could be residual memories, leftovers, remnants, perhaps fragments of a time when humans were fully consciousness. Downloading information from the cloud, or from the aether (in other words, whatever environment, your reality by which you are surrounded). It is effortless, I think, because the aether and you are one in the same. There is no boundary between the body and space. The skin is not a terminus…you know, at the end of my fingertip, I end. Boundaries are an illusion. I do not stop at my fingertip, I continue. My skin is not boundary betwixt I and space, skin is more like clothing. I am a protrusion into the third/fourth dimension, as such comprised of the fabric of the universe itself, same as the sun, the tree, a star, an insect, etc. Ultimately, there is no one I, nor is there a We, but only Is or This or That Which Can Be Called EveryOne. I don’t have a word in the language for this concept. That does not mean that there are no other Ones, I’m speaking merely for this universe, I have no certainty beyond that (or actually any at all, for that matter).

“Inside most people there’s a feeling of being separate — separated from everything. And they’re not. They’re part of absolutely everyone, and everything. [People have this] spot that [they] can’t see past…, the spot where they were taught they were disconnected from everything. [If they could they would see that they are connected] and how beautiful they really are. And that there’s no need to hide, or lie. And that it’s possible to talk to someone without any lies, with no sarcasms, no deceptions, no exaggerations or any of the things that people use to confuse the truth.” ~Powder

People are afraid to live in this way (reality as decoherent, as a quantum foam, or a non-solid state; reality can be as flexible as a dream) because they are afraid that they will shatter. These are all delusions, I think. There is no such thing as retribution; this is a human invented trait, not one of nature. There is no such thing as punishment; this is merely a legal term. People are afraid of condemnation or of excommunication. But humans do not have to live in this way, it is possible to be honest without worry of that.

It IS possible to live that way, but it can be scary on the way there. People are always looking for the jackboot and the oppression because in western society, that is the consequence. Human beings have forgotten how to treat one another as humans and most of all, they have forgotten that they ARE human beings, living organisms, who are children of the universe, and really have nothing to fear because death is not an afterlife or a hell/heaven, or an end, but another form of energy, just as life is a form of energy. We are not bound to life; therefore, we are not obligated in death. Immortality exists, just not in the way the movies describe.

 

*Image Credits (stock used with permission)–
“Thou Art God” (above image) is a photomanipulation created by NIKOtheOrb, using stock produced by:
EK Stock Photos, “Macro Eye I”
Luca Pedrotti, “Male Silhouette Pointing”
Funerium, “Cosmos8_0009”, distributed by Resurgere Stock
Inspired by a drawing on Reddit

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October 14, 2012

Reality Personified

“Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.” ~Alan Watts

It’s these blistery October afternoons that remind us all how delicate we are. How fragile our beings have become, spent too many days denied the light of our inner sun. We must remember that we are more like the seasons: we Fall and we Spring, we die and we live, wane and wax like the Winter/Summer tide.

We are Consciousness contained in a moment, personified. Infinity beats in our willful hearts. We are Humanity, connected and amplified. We needn’t run from the inevitable convergene of our open minds. Breathe in, breathe out. Exhale. Inhale.

Fear is the illusion of misery’s child and we are innately flexible. Courage is not in a liquid escape hatch and awkwardness is not rejected by a rainbow of 3-dimensional dots, post script.

We are change. . .we embody it. We can change our minds, it is not a matter of expensive faith, it is simply the matter of course. Look inside. . . no monster lurks here. Only the power to alter ourselves. With power comes will and we can Will to change anything out there.

Reality is not set down on sheets of paper. Reality is realized in the minds of conscious beings. . . and we are consciousness. We are Woman and we are Man. We are Humanity fooled into thinking that we have to behave like apes, apeing our inherent ability at Honesty, Integrity, Reliability, Peace, Accountability. It’s only a difference of knowing that the game does not have to be rigged.

If Life is a game, why don’t we Play?

Why don’t we swing on the spiral playground, laughing at ourselves for being so silly as to think this wasn’t just a ride. We don’t have to grow old. . . we can live anew.

WHEEEEEEEE!

See the experimental music video inspired by this post, REMIX: Reality rePersonified, here.

 

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