HEY JEALOUSY

"Hey Jealousy"
March 12, 2013

(click image for song "Hey Jealousy")

Wiki says:  "Jealousy is an emotion and typically refers to the negative thoughts and feelings of insecurity, fear, and anxiety over an anticipated loss of something that the person values, particularly in reference to a human connection. Jealousy often consists of a combination of presenting emotions such as anger, resentment, inadequacy, helplessness and disgust."

Recently the word "jealousy" has been appearing along with the thoughts to write something about it, so that maybe something could be seen.  In the picture above with the eggs, there is a look on the one eggs face that may imply that it is mad that the other two eggs are together, or maybe it is upset that they are resting and it is not, or that they look content and it is not.  The underlying thing of jealousy is that someone or something has what you don't and that you want it.

The quickest way to see jealousy without having to change it, is to see that there has to be a story about "you" to have the emotion labeled "jealousy" without the "you" story … jealousy is just an emotion that is labeled.    And to take it a step further, emotions are just energy; like a wave that rises and falls (one doesn't try to change a wave, but many try to change emotions, instead of just letting them be until they subside).
So jealousy can be great tool for watching emotions rise and fall without doing anything about them.  To just have them.  And it can be a great tool in the seeing that there is no "you" to be jealous, for when the depth of this realization comes, you will laugh that you were always and only jealous of your own self. That might be a big jump but let's look, if you find that there is no "you (no individual you)" then you begin to realize at the same time, that it is the same for everyone and that the "sameness" that annimates the appearance of "you" is the "same" in everyone.  In this seeing, or just Knowing, you don't have to see it, because in the world it appears as if we are all different and separate, but that is only because the attention is on the "world" and not what the world appears "IN."  That doesn't mean that you might not still feel the emotion as real, but you will know who you are jealous of; and in That Recognition once again rest in yourSelf.

Jealousy usually appears when there is either a fear of loss, that something you have or want will go to someone else, and it also appears when one does not feel adequate enough to retain what one has.   So the goal of this writing, if there is one, is to help the reader begin to use jealousy, when it arises, as a way to bring the attention back to theirSelf, instead of projecting it outwards.  You can use any example of jealousy. I just had one the other day and it was with my own child.  We both took a motorcycle class, we both drove bikes for two days, we were tested on our riding abilities and on our studies.  He passed both tests with flying colors and rave reviews from the instructor. I on the other hand did not pass the written test and just barely passed the driving.  He was thrilled, as was I for him, and yet at the same time, the feelings arose of not being good enough, that my son was better than me, that I was not good at anything in life, that I was a failure (Now you can look at all those sentences and see that if you remove the word "I/me" then all that are there are thoughts and feelings, but with no one to place them on they would just rise and fall, but with an "I" they stay around because they have someone/something to stick too.)  The more one can begin to see the "I" thought as an illusion, the less energy and intensity emotions have.  The gift in this jealousy arising was the opportunity to once again see that it takes an "I/me" to keep it alive and without it, life just happens and moves on.  It only stays (the emotion) if it is kept fed with the "I/me" thoughts.

This might be challenging to point to, but with no separation, with no "I/me" in either the form of my son or myself, there is just one thing going on ... in seemingly two forms, one getting a license and one not getting a license but that doesn't separate Self from Self.  Just like the one writing this and you reading this are in the same Self, that doesn't change that the writer writes this and the reader reads it, even though it is only One receiver/giver, appearing as more than one, yet only one and even less than one.  It is quite challenging to point to the simplicity of "Less than One."  And one might say, well who are you pointing this out too ... if there is only one...less than one ... myself :o)

So self :o)  When jealousy arises the next time and it will cause this is the training ground for remembering who you Are.  When it arises, possibly begin to see that it takes an "I" to be jealous and so you could begin by asking "Who am I" that is jealous.  You also could look at what you are afraid of losing and why you must hold on to it so tightly, if it is trying to get away and you could offer it release from your grasp.  (Which includes beliefs about yourself ... like the example above ... the willingness to let go of the belief in the "I/me" thought, drops all the beliefs and who would want to hold on to beliefs like the ones above?)

You could also look at the "other" that you are jealous of and KNOW without understanding...that it is yourSELF in another form that is receiving it, and therefore, what would you keep from yourSelf?  This may not ease your discomfort but if you are coming from the space of WHO YOU ARE then it will, but if you are coming from the space of "who you think you are" then it can be quite challenging to see and let go.  So begin to place the attention on "who you are" by discovering who you are.  When you hear the words "I/me" begin to allow the possiblity that it is a lie and all thoughts that attach to it are also lies.

WHO IS REBORN?

"Who Is Reborn?"
March 7, 2013

From a Humanities Class at College of the Siskiyous, Weed, CA.

Student writes:

The module describes the bodhisattva as “one who has renounced nirvana for himself and takes a vow to postpone his own entering into nirvana in order to help all other sentient beings to reach it first.  For their sakes, he consented to be born again and again into the Round of Samsara, until, in the course of innumerable ages, even the grass and the dust has attained Buddhahood.”

Responded:

What stands out in your quote above, is the overlooking of something quite simple and yet quite major.

                                              "Who is reborn?"

One might be quick to say "the Buddha" and that is what the mind/thoughts will attempt to make you focus on because that is something that can be known.

The mind/thoughts "believe" that it is a "man" named "buddha" but it keeps one from overlooking …

                                             "Who is reborn?"

It is not a man ... it is you ... the TRUE YOU ... you are BUDDHA nature but the mind/thoughts will not want you to see this because if you do, you will have nothing to search for and then the mind loses it's power and becomes the Servant to the HEART/BUDDHA/INDESCRIBABLE TRUE NATURE\EMPTINESS.

                                   All sentient beings are in BUDDHA.

This is the simplicity that is too simple for the mind, which thrives and stays alive on complexity.  However, as one begins to stop using the mind/thoughts to understand ... TRUE NATURE appears.  The mind finally sits back in a recliner with its feet up after a long exhausting journey. The mind (who you think you are) must begin to relax back into the recliner to begin to SEE who you TRULY ARE.  All the talking about it will only lead you away from what you are IN.

Once you have discovered what you are In ... then Speak from that Space ... that Emptiness.

THE D.I.

On Having a Drill Instructor as a Teacher . . .

The “ego” loves to be pandered to and adored.  There is nothing wrong with this … everything has it’s time and place.  However, everyone could use a Drill Instructor from time to time (or constantly) because in a sense The D.I. is the “ego” (who we *think* we are in this world)’s worst nightmare and the “True Self” (that which cannot be thought)’s best Friend.  The reason The D.I. is not “your” friend is because you cannot predict what The D.I. will do and The D.I. is the Best Friend to the Self because the DI can predict what you do in a flash, in fact, usually The D.I. sees what you will do ten moves ahead of where you are at. 

The D.I.'s job is to break you of who you think you are.  You may want to fight The D.I. but you know even when you do it, you don’t really want to win.  You want to lose yourself and yet at the same time are afraid of the unknown.  Who you *think* you are is like a “woobie” blanket that you had as a child … it couldn’t really protect you from anything but it sure felt like it could.  That is what the “ego/who you *think* you are” is … it is a blanket/skin that is wrapped around “Nothing” to make it seem like you are protected from something, but even the *something* that one thinks they are protected from … is in Nothing.  Not “nothing” like blank … Nothing like “No Thing.”  This means that in a sense there is something there but it is nothing that you can use the senses for to understand.  The “ego/ who you *think* you are” attempts to understand everything, yet it is The D.I.'s job to remove what you have come to understand and leave you empty(ier) of who you think you are.

You hear people all the time say … I am a smoker … I am a drinker … I am a vegetarian … I am a meat eater … I am a man … I am a woman … I am an alcoholic … I am a drug addict … I am a home maker … I am white … I am black … I am Native American … I am Indian … I am Chinese … I am Christian … I am buddhist … I am atheist … I am a husband … I am a wife … I am a sister … I am a brother … I am a department store clerk … I am a musician … I am a writer … I am a poet … I am an astronaut … I am an inventor … I am human … I am (insert name here).  Yet you … the True You … are none of those things.  All of that is Secondary to who you Truly Are.

This one is lucky it actually has a Drill Sergeant as a Teacher.  Not Lucky for “me” just Lucky.  This doesn’t mean that everyone should go join the Military … though it’s a start. 

When the Student is Ready … the Teacher will appear.  How will you know the Teacher has appeared … the Teacher will not pander to you.  You won’t always get what you want but you will get exactly what you need.

Want an Asskicking?  Click Here.

THOUGHTS

(Click Photo for "Ask YourSelf")

Those thoughts you have that go by all the time, one after another, bringing all kinds of other thoughts and reactions and sensations, have nothing to do with Reality.  This is not something that you can take someone’s word for (although taking someone’s word for it, at first, is a great helping hand in beginning to see for yourself), you must be willing to investigate whether or not, thoughts have anything to do with Reality, or do thoughts appear after the fact.  It is not only possible, but actual, that everything you think, is after what happens, even your arm moving or your eyes reading this, is after the fact of it happening.  The body registers the information and then the brain receives it and thought appears and this is all very instantaneous, yet still behind the action.

Why would you want to begin to see that thoughts have nothing to do with Reality, because then you will begin to see that you are not the thoughts.  This will lead to beginning to ask, if I am not the thoughts, then who am I?  Or “if they are not my thoughts, who’s are they?”  Did you ever wonder where a thought comes from or do you just blindly follow them?  The funny thing is…the blindly following is even before the thought.  Awareness of this, will begin to shed light on a darkened state of mind.  Until someone turns the light on, no one even knows they are in the dark. 

It’s like fish at the bottom of the sea, they do not know they are in the dark, if you went down there and said to them…”hey…fishes…you are in the dark” they might say… “what the hell is dark?” how would you describe it to them?  However, if you took one in your arms and started swimming north, up and up and the dark became lighter and lighter, until the fishes eyes burned and it said “oh…I see…it is so warm, it is beyond warm, it is behind kind, I didn’t know what cold was until now, I don’t know how to explain this, but I know how it feels.”  And then you start to go back down and the fish doesn’t understand why would you bring him back down to the darkness and you explain that the Light would obliterate him because he comes from the dark, but as he now Knows the Light … Knows where all are going and that it is not out or in or north or south or up or down but it is IN everyONE, that the fish can now point to it with others that are in the dark and Lighten their load.

So the fish goes back down to the deep sea and it is not easy to tell those that have not seen something, something which cannot be explained but can be Known and yet he starts and he begins to help move the other fishes that Hear him up slowly into lighter gentler waters and as they move up others move up with them and they all begin to see that what once so dark and scary and unknown, is not that at all.  That they have been in it all along, they only thought they were in the dark.  But the Light was/is always Here.

Thoughts are like Dark waters, you can share with one that they are not in Dark water but only paying attention to Dark water, but the only way for one to See they were in Dark water, is to begin to stop pay attention to the thoughts.  Not trying to stop the thought…just not paying attention to them.  One must begin to pay attention to what is before the thoughts, what thoughts appear In, the space between thoughts…this space right here (       ).

If you are one that is ready to begin to stop paying attention to the thoughts, then get in touch with me. 

  ~Joysters

WHO AM I, REALLY?

This question is really the topic of my Thesis Essay and I have been sitting with this question since it first appeared probably at a very young age but not in that form.  The question didn't actually appear in form until age 22 when I had left my husband at the time and was living in the apartment over his moms and I was sitting on the floor and realizing…if I am not someone’s wife, then who am I?  And then I started writing it down and could not understand, who I was.  If you took everything away that everyone and I had been saying that I am…who am I?  Who is the “I” that keeps appearing and making “me” miserable.  

Then it was said/heard that “I” am not needed…well where will “I” go.  Then a mass panic for so long of attempting to get rid of the “I” and then finally finding out that you can’t get rid of something that doesn’t exists.

That took 40 years (minus 2 for we don't have an "I" thought when we are born and until responding to it) and even still when the “I” thoughts come they can seem to have so much power, but then something Greater says “where is your attention?”  And the light bulb goes on that the attention had once again been placed on the “I” thought and not what the “I” thought appears in.

How subtle the shift and how Great the reward.  So simple and not dramatic … though all these dramatic events led to the simplicity of this.  Asking “who am I?” consistently for 20 years, not in a pattern but in a silent questioning…when there was horror or fear, when there was great love when there was passion … during all these things the question would appear…but “who are you?” and so all the attachments were slowly taken away.  All the wantings were not important like they once were.  Everything was lost.  But not the question.  One can lose everything in this world but they cannot lose the Self.  They can even lose theirself (small “s”) but they cannot lose the SELF.  You will not ever be alone because you are the Aloneness.  Looking out of the eyes is the most gentle, kindest, compassionateness.  It has no desire to make anything different.  It just SEEs and is Aware of itself…in all it’s many forms.

DO NOTHING ...

To do nothing goes against all the conditioning of the world.  When you think you have a problem, to do nothing to solve it would seem strange to most.  Yet it is in the “doing” that one doesn’t see that there is no problem.  The doing creates the problem.  If you can sit, even if only momentarily, you will see that there is no problem, it is all in your head.

Doing nothing in the face of life screaming “do something” begins to take the power away from the mind.  From the thoughts that say “things should be some other way.”  If things are meant to be some other way, they will be, wait and see. 

All the action to “make something” some other way, is just wasted energy.  Because as you begin to “do nothing” about  the thoughts and situations that appear with more regularity, you will find that the only thing you ever did was “think” you could do something, and that was where the energy was wasted.  What you will do, that you do not know, you must, in a sense, train yourself, to wait and see what will happen.

If you are going to “actually” do something it will happen without your assistance.  It seems as if two things are being spoken about here, and in a sense they are.  Because most think that they are the one doing it, that they are the doing, so that is who I speak to when I say “you are not doing it” I am speaking to the one that is actually not doing it … but thinks it is.

To some this will sound crazy, but to a small few they will begin to pause.  When the whole world or when the mind is screaming “do something.”  They will stop.  Take a look around and see, is this really happening or am I only “thinking” this is happening.  And if they look around and see that there is not much actually going on around them, a smile will appear on their face and they will wait and see what happens next.  Maybe something, maybe nothing, but they are beginning to know that it is not up to them.

THE SACRED...

Recently there have been different ways of seeing the “Sacred” in the world.  One is how Abraham Lincoln saw people’s rights as “Sacred.”  How he could not or would not, in spite of the rest of the behaviors of the world at the time, see people as unequal.  That birth itself was the symbol of equality and in that all life is “Sacred.”

Then there is Chief Sealth who speaks for the Earth and how the Earth is “Sacred.”  And how can one buy or sell the sky, the sun, the ocean and yet we think we can buy and sell the Earth’s Ground.

Recently, myTeacher asked, “Do you see everything as Sacred.”  And there was an immediate “Yes” and a simultaneous “no” and a just sitting there, with no words coming out and the thought appearing “is that a trick question?”  Overtime, since this question was asked, it has resounded in the mind.  The Heart that made the immediate “Yes” has no thought about Sacred or not Sacred.  To the Heart there is only and ever Sacred.  Everything appears in the Sacred, comes from the Sacred and returns to the Sacred.  To the mind, which categorizes and thinks things are separate from itSelf, only what it says is Sacred, is Sacred to it.  If it says that the Mountains are Sacred then that is what it is, but if it says it isn’t it will destroy it, maybe by putting a structure on it, or blowing it up to put a train through it or digging it for gold or whatever one does when it doesn’t See.  It is the same with the Ocean and the Sky and the Body.  It is not about right or wrong.  Only simple Awareness of what one is in and then See what one does from that Awareness.

Before land was bought and sold, there were wars for territories, even the Indians were fighting for territory rights before offers to buy were made, so in once sense if you read what Chief Sealth has written, maybe the white man came to begin to shift the ways of land ownership/territory rights, to move away from violence, which had been going on for thousands of years (and still continues today, but to a much, much, much less extent).  That the white man came to create a way (which may take centuries to see) of sharing the land without violence (and white men don’t get high and mighty it is always God/Love/Self that works through the man that is transparent enough to have It come through).

Land being bought and sold may not have to be the way of the future, but it did have to be a “way” for a time so that one could move “away” from violence in obtaining as sense of “security” (a “sense” which is not ever satisfied until the concept “security” is given up).  So maybe this is what Chief Sealth could not see about the white man at the time, because the white man is also violent (from thousands of years of conditioning) and so this is a process (in a sense) of the Sacred.  The Sacred has no concept or concern for time or for how long it takes for one to SEE.

If you know anything about History, you see that it takes centuries and thousands of years to reprogram the mind to See Sacredness.  There were slaves of all nationalities for thousands of years, there have been wars over land, over beliefs for as long as recorded history.  And yet there is the possibility now upon us to begin to look at what we are fighting for, what all this war is about, that one would rather kill for a sense of “security” than to just give up the belief that it needs any “security.”   That no one would ever have to die over a religious belief could begin right this instant, if one just drop the belief that anyone has to believe anything … to BE.  That BEing itself is proof of GOD.  That what you look at all around you, right in front of you, always and all ways is GOD.  That we have only killed ourselves is the Cosmic Joke, but it is not so funny until one Sees and no longer needs to kill to be right.  That one can just say “BAS!”  “ENOUGH” I would not rather be right anymore.  I would rather die myself than kill. 

This is not just about being Human … this is about all form.  If you look at history, killing has not stopped killing from happening.  Killing only creates more killing, because it creates more pain and no one wants pain so killing continues.  But you must be the one to stop.  No one can stop for you.  You must look at why you kill.  Whether it is with what you call your own “hands” or the hands of another that you request to kill for you.  Only you can walk off the battlefield of life.  Only you can be done with killing.  No one will do it for you, as no one was born for you and no one will die for you and no one but you walks this earth for you. 

So look at what you call “your life.”  See who you are, in any work/position that you are in, you have the ability to share what you Know.  You do not have to quit the Military to not be a killer, you just be in the Military and not kill.  Yet if you find that you must kill, then you must investigate that desire, do not run from it, it has been this fear that has had you running forever and killing forever, face yourself once and for all.  This is not about just killing humans, it is about killing of all life, the killing to survive, when we are past having to survive.  Killing anything to sustain ones life, is no longer necessary.

You do not have to stop anything that you are doing, you just bring the Light of Truth to what you do, which you do anyway, but now consciously.