MEDITATION ...

"God The Organic" by Peter Van Straten

The following is a Q&A from a Humanities class taken at College of the Siskiyous in Weed, CA.

HUMANITIES Question:  Elucidate the link between meditation and spirituality. Why are spiritual disciplines, of which meditation is one, so often deemed necessary for spiritual development? How might meditation affect one’s thinking and sense of self?

In Truth there is no separation between Meditation and Spirituality, however, how it is being worded, or how it seems the question is asked, is as if they are separate. 

To have a link means that something isn’t connected.  However, the practice of Meditation, can reveal that all of life is in Stillness, that there is no separation, that there is only One (“Less than one because even the word one implies two.” ~Wayne Austin.)

The practice of Meditation is useful in quieting the mind enough for it to realize what it is in, and ultimately, to realize that there is no such thing as “mind.” 

If the practice of Meditation is to show up in your life than that is the tool that is used to point that one in the direction of itSelf.  However, Meditation is not the only tool, one can Awaken to theirSelf in any situation, “Truth uses whatever is available to reveal itSelf.” ~Wayne Austin. 

For the one typing this, Meditation was the tool used to place the crack in reality, however, in looking back there were many things, events, like using Mescaline as a teenager before the mind had become too rigid with beliefs, so many things had revealed about the world and how it is not how it appears.

Things that are frowned upon in the mainstream society - for this one were the exact things that came/showed up to open this one.  So if you find that the things that have opened your mind are not things you are able to casually talk about, you are not alone.  There are various different ways it will and can happen if it is supposed to happen.  No one can do anything to make Awakening happen, but what Awakening requires for it to happen, will.

So when one says “Awakening,” that is the same as saying “Spiritual.”  The Spiritual Awakening will happen and there is really nothing to do about it, your reading this is part of it, just like everything that shows up in what you call “your” life is all in the direction of Awakening to the Self.  It doesn’t matter where you are on the planet, what you do for a living (or don’t do) what music you listen to or make or what movies you watch, whether you like sports or don’t, whether you are in jail or a Caribbean island, when it is time for your Awakening, you will Awaken and it will not be like anything you thought.

After the Awakening here, during a quick 15 minute Meditation on a lunch break from work, it was so frightening that all practice of Mediation was stopped for almost 6 years, for fear of what had happened.  The “mind” could not grasp it’s undoing so quickly and what was the most beautiful thing that can possibly be offered was turned and flipped into something that one spent years running from. 

Why would one run from theirSelf?

Because the thoughts about who one is, are so solidly believed in, that the Truth of who they are seems too Big, too Beautiful and too Brilliant to be True.  

So the crack may show up for some and frighten them, some it happens to in Meditation, some in near death experiences, some hanging over a toilet in a drunken stupor, or as a mundane as writing a check, but if you have found that something happened that you cannot explain, but frightened you because you did not understand and didn’t know where to go or who to talk to, then know that Truth is kind, it is ruthless and brutal in its Wake, but it is kind in it’s unfolding and the undoing of what you have thought will begin to happen and those that will help to reveal it to you will show up. 

It’s like an earthquake and then everyone comes to clean up the rubble, except we are not rebuilding a “new” you.  What is cleaned up is removed and you are left with what you have always been.  What was there before you were born, what was there looking out of your eyes when you were a baby and didn’t have an “I” thought and it is what you are right now, before the thoughts “I am.”  It is there and it is not an it and it lives through the mask that is you until the mask drops and is left on the floor (whether that is in life or as you discard the body through death one way or another the mask comes off).

Nothing is wasted, so practice Meditation, but do it knowing that you already are whatever it is that you are attempting to be.  Begin to pay attention to the Stillness that everything appears in, as often as possible, continually be vigilant and redirect the attention back onto Stillness.  As this becomes a way of life, will begin to see that all of Life appears in Meditation.

Namaste.

SUICIDE

February 11, 2013

This morning during Meditation the topic came up to write about suicide.  This is not an easy topic to talk about, well it is easy to talk about but maybe it is not so easy to hear, we shall see.  Today is the anniversary of my significant other, of nine years, Mark’s death.  It is not surprising that this would be a topic of discussion, but it is surprising in that it showed up.

All “suicide” stems from one thing.  Suicide stems from the belief in the “I” thought.  Without an “I” there is no one that would commit suicide.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that “I” don’t know how powerful thoughts can be.  Have attempted suicide on a few occasions and do know how dark it can get and how strong a belief can become.  So this is not about belittling the power of the mind.  Instead let’s shed some LIGHT on it. 

Let’s take this slowly if we can. 

Thoughts of suicide appear when one is paying attention to thoughts and not who they ARE.  You are not a thought, if you were, you couldn’t pay attention to it … you would be it.  So when someone attempts suicide it is because they have placed all the attention on a “thought” and in turn created it into a belief and then believe the “belief” is true.  It is always something about a past or future that cannot be changed but is not let go of.  The person imagines something about themselves and/or the circumstance they “think” they are in and see no way out, but how could one, you have to be alive to see it.  Suicide wouldn’t exist if everyone would just wait to see what happens, instead of just assuming they know what will happen.

Let’s look at an example of how a “thought” becomes a “belief.”  Let’s use warts (heh) as an example.  If you have ever had a Plantar’s Wart, you know that it starts out small (like a thought) and then over time it gets harder (like when you keep paying attention to a thought) and then eventually it is so hard that you have to get it cut out or nitrogen to remove it (a belief becomes solidly believed and suicide seems the only option). 

So if you can see this … if you can see the thought become solid and believed in, then you also can see that the undoing of the belief is the undoing of Suicide. 

One does not have to kill the “I” thought or any thought and killing the body will not kill the “I” thought, because the “I” thought is not the body. 

How sucky will it be if you kill the body (thinking it is you) only to come to find out that you weren’t the body and now you are without a body but still *think* you exist.  There is a good book on this, it is not the Truth, but it is a good pointer and can be helpful in seeing things from a different perspective.  It is called “Stephen Lives.”

It writing is not about killing the “I” thought, it is about beginning to see that it is not real. 

Only you can stop paying attention to the thoughts, the quickest way to begin doing this is to look and see who is watching the thoughts. 

You can’t be the thought if you are watching the thought, so who is watching? 

This will take some practice because you have been watching the thoughts for so long, you believe them to be true. 

Look how strong beliefs are; if we didn’t have them, there would be no war, there would be nothing to fight over, if you didn’t believe there was something to fight over.  And how do you begin to see that there is nothing to fight over, by beginning to STOP and take a look, honest look around you and see if anything that you believe or are thinking, is actually happening, or are you just “thinking” about it. 

If you are just “thinking” about it then it is not real, it is your imagination and you must wait and see what shows up.  Stop assuming you know what is going to happen, you don’t. 

Begin to start waiting to see what will happen, you might be pleasantly surprised.

If you are having thoughts about suicide and how awful everything is, you may want to at first, get some help with the emotional part of it, that can be assisted by certain medications and am not saying that everyone should be medicated (you actually do not need it … but it can be helpful in the beginning - just to get you to a place where you can begin to see that thoughts are not real). 

There are benefits to medication as well as some awful side-effects, so watch yourself, make a plan not to be on them for very long and do the work.  Self-investigate.  Do this with the question “Who am I?” and write down everything that comes up.  If it is something that you can change or alter then it is not who you are, do a process of elimination until there is nothing left (no beliefs about who you are, all that is left is who you Are, without beliefs).

Continue to bring yourself/attention back to the moment you are IN.  Not the one you are “thinking” about, the one right in front of your face.

Please feel free to write privately.

There is also a movie called “The Bridge” (that is a link to the full movie) that can be watched online by clicking that link, it is well done and can offer, again, some insights.

ILLUMINE

The following Q&A was spurred by questions asked in a Humanities class in response to reading Plato's Allegory of the Cave.  This is the great Gift of education...that it makes one look at what they think, feel, believe.  They take in information and process it through the filters of their upbringing and of those that they have looked up to.  Ultimately though, all those things must be, in a sense, by passed or Seen through, to know who one actually IS.

HUMANITIES QUESTIONS

After reading and thinking about Plato's Allegory of the Cave in Module X, respond to the following:

1. If Plato is right that the material world is an illusion, how would too great a reliance on materialism effect ethical decisions?

First, take out the “if” and just assume that he is right and you, the one reading this are wrong. 

“If” is the doubt, the holding on to the darkness. It is the finger in the wound. 

If you are automatically assuming he is possibly wrong then there is no way to reveal to you, that you are. “

"You” think you are real, if you didn’t you wouldn’t be reading this. This isn’t to underestimate the power of the mind and the belief in illusion, this is to reveal the power of the mind and belief in illusion. 

Materialism and ethics are secondary, you need not be concerned with either. Let the attention be on the Light that one is IN. It is not out there for you to find, it is silently waiting in you, you are IN it and all it takes is a slight shift in perception/attention onto That which you are IN. 

It is not about looking for it, because you cannot find what you are in, you actually stop looking for it and KNOW that you are in IT without proof. 

It is just like looking at the illusion to prove it is not an illusion. 

Just stop looking for proof and relax into what you have always been in, what Plato was in, what Socrates was in and what you are In. Then it does not matter about the illusion or materialism or ethics.

2. How does the allegory of the prisoners in the cave watching shadows on a wall relate to us today? What shadows do we see, and how do they distort our sense of what is real?

If you can imagine that you are a film projector (not you actually but the body is a film projector) then this might be easy to see. 

You have misidentified yourself as the film projector (the body) and not what comes through the projector to make the shadows, which is Light. You are the light which comes through, but your attention has been on the projector and the film (life playing out before you). But you are not the projector (illusion) or the film (illusion) you are the LIGHT that comes through, so all one need do in any situation where they think illusion is real, is to put the attention back onto the LIGHT.

3. To what extent are people today like (or unlike) the figures in the cave? To what extent is the world we know like the cave?

Do not worry about the world, it doesn’t need your help. There is nothing that can be or should be done about the world because it is projected onto a screen of something that has already been written, place the attention on what is often overlooked, place the attention on what is animating the film in front of your eyes, that is animating the body, making things appear before you. 

One gets lost in the movie because it is such a good movie, it has everything one could ever want in it, all kinds of drama, love, hate, peace, war, you get friends and foes and family and you get to dream in the dream and fly planes and drive cars and write letters and email and get sickness and death and birth and you get anything that can be imagined, however, first place the attention on what all of this comes from, without the LIGHT none of it could be seen. 

The shadows are what is placed on the LIGHT to have an experience of reality, just like any photographer knows that it needs certain shadows and shadings to get a picture to come out the way they would like it to appear. This is how it is with shadows, when the clouds cover the sun … the sun does not disappear it is just covered over…this is how it is with YOU…you are the LIGHT and have mistaken yourself for the clouds, but the clouds appear in YOU. 

Just like all the characters you had in your dream last night appeared for you to interact with and then when you woke up they were gone, this is how it is with life, everyone is appearing for you to play with, but to begin to See this, you must first Know who You Are. 

And ... the only way to Know Who You Are, is to begin to place your attention on the Light that you are IN. 

Don’t ask how to do this, begin by asking “who?” Who am I? All how and why questions, are a distraction, when you begin to place the attention on the Light that you are In and questions come up about how can this be or why, don’t look for an answer. 

You don’t have to search for who you are < -- can you see the futility of that? How can one search for who they are, wouldn’t they overlook who they are just by searching, you Are who you Are, stop looking and pay attention to what you are In. 

Use all things that come to you to push you back into the question of Who Am I? and then place the attention on the LIGHT, that which doesn’t move, that which cannot be described even though LIGHT is used as a description it is not that, but it is close enough to use to describe that you have misidentified yourself with something in the world and not what the world is IN.

This is actually a very joyous event, once one gives up trying to understand it (doubt) and just accepts that it IS. 

You are already Awake and Aware of yourSelf. SMILE into the Dream, it is all for you.