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.

GOD IS FOR GIVING (Forgiving)

You hear a lot about forgiving.  How we should forgive one another, forgive ourselves, search for forgiveness.  There is so much about forgiving that it is often overlooked that forgiving isn’t really forgiving.  True Forgiving/Forgiveness … is not even having anything or anyone to forgive.  Hence the title of the post…God (whatever it is that you think of when you hear that word) is for Giving…maybe that is where the word “forgiving” came from … just Give…if someone thinks they need your forgiveness then just give it…just Give without thinking about it…come from a Giving nature, allow God to Give through you.  You don’t know what you or anyone else needs, but you get to see what is needed when you step out of the way and see.  You don’t even know what Giving is.  Sometimes Giving looks like taking and sometimes taking looks like Giving.  But in spite of the appearances…God is for Giving…it is a Constant of That.  There Only Giving.

One could use the life of Dr. King as an example, his life was in Service to Giving.  Giving a new way of seeing, giving a way of making changes without resorting to violence, giving a voice to those that were not being Heard at the time and for leading a large group of people all in the same direction of giving a Dream of Unity Life and in his Death, he continues to Give by reminding us of His Dream, that we have the ability to get along without violence, without judgments, with the ability to not always understand what we are seeing but the patience to wait and see what comes. 

He said that all are my Brothers (don’t get hung up on gender…Brother has no gender) if one is willing to go to the Core…they will find where “we/Brothers” are all the Same, Genderless, Race-less, Color-less, Religion-less, Body-less, Personality-less.  When you get to that Core any questions of how or why … that you might be having now, will be Answered.  God is For Giving and will Give yourSelf to you…if you are willing and ultimately, even if you are not.  :o)

ALL THOUGHTS ARE LIES

This is a pretty radical jump for some, though the more one is willing to look at it as an actuality, the more it can be Seen.

Let's use an example of when you first meet someone.  You may say "hello" and your first thoughts are "what a nice person" but you have only just said hello.  Then you look at their pants and there is a rip and you think "oh they must be poor" then they say something that you don't agree with and you may think "oh well we don't have anything in common" and then they might tell you something else about their life and you think "oh I love this person."

This happens all the time doesn't it?  Don't you find yourself flip flopping between

good thoughts and bad thoughts about everything that appears before you?  But thoughts only have the meaning that you give to them.  Only you can say what thought you think is good and what thought you think is bad about anything that appears before you. 

What you are being pointed towards here, is that no matter what you think...it is a lie. 

Thoughts are lies, because they do not reflect Truth.  Truth cannot be thought.

Once this is Seen you will begin to experience each moment as it actually is, not how you think it is or how you think it should be.  This happens by no longer believing what you think is true and being willing to be wrong about what you think about anything and everything.

How can you verify that anything that you just read is True and not just more thoughts (which they actually are however, they are thoughts that Point to Truth)?  You can do this by beginning to watch your thoughts.  As you pay attention to what you think, you may begin to see that "thoughts" cannot be in the present moment, they are always about the past or the future.  To be in the present moment you cannot think about it, because each thought moves you out of the moment you are in to describe it to you.  Like if you are looking a tree, you are just seeing it, but the moment you think "oh the tree is brown" it is about what you have seen not what you are seeing.  This may not be clear at first, however it will be if you continue to watch your thoughts, paying attention to what you think, but not believing it, because even when you say the tree is brown...what is brown?  Really isn't that just a word we picked out of any combination of letters to agree that when we see what we "think" is that color we can share the experience of the color, but how do we even know our eyes see the same color, when all we are actually doing is agreeing on a word about a color.  This may seem complicated at first but it becomes very, very simple, when one stops believing and eventually even paying attention to the thoughts and begins to just SEE.

Ultimately it does not matter if you see this, because life happens in spite of what you or anyone thinks about it.  That is the good news.

Only Love Remains

If one takes an honest look at the past, 

everything you currently see will disappear.

Life has a way of recycling itself so that one day

even humans will be extinct 

and something else will be in its place.

All the books and all the teachings, learning, experiences 

are all written on water.

What you are reading right now 

will one day be washed away 

along with everything else.

But what Remains...

has always been

Always IS.

It is what has no opposite, 

one can call it Love, 

but it matters not what you call it 

because even words will eventually be washed away.

It is Here now and you don't need anything to Know it.

If you recognize that everything you have relied upon to find it 

are all things that can and will be taken away

Then ... when everything one relies upon is gone.

What Remains.

A TOUGH EXTERIOR...

(Trust that the  hands that hold you Love you.)

There are many examples one can use to point to a tough exterior.  It comes up to use the example of turtles because they would not make it in this world without one (a tough exterior that is). 

When we are first born we are like a turtle, we are flimsy and we need protection from the elements and this is usually where a parents or caretakers come in and play this role, without them we would probably not survive.

As we grow older and have many life experiences, we can grow shells around us like the Turtle, it just isn’t as obviously seen.  We do this to protect ourselves from being hurt, but unlike the turtle it is not just physical protection we wear our shells for it is psychological protection also (which sometimes is the more challenging of the two to take off…because psychological isn’t actually real and so you have to somehow show someone that what they believed in never was and that can be more challenging that healing a broken bone, because you can see that a broken bone has healed but how do you heal a thought (psychological wound)?

The thing that gets distorted is that one begins to rely on the shell and not one what the shell appeared to protect.  There is a bit of trouble attempting to word this.  If you look at your body…as the Turtle shell… then you can look at the Heart as the body of the turtle.  I don’t know how clear this will sound but the body is the shell that covers one’s Heart/Light.  The Heart requires the protection of the body to “be” in this world just like the turtle’s body requires the shell for it to be in this world.

But the shell is not the turtle and the body is not the Heart…they are extensions of each.  So the body of a turtle is tender and the Heart is tender too, however a turtle is not weak, nor is the Heart and at some point one is wise to begin to look at what the body is protecting. 

This is quite a challenge to describe, however, the Heart cannot be hurt, ultimately because it is not in this world, the world is in It.  But how does one begin to help one see this.  It’s like saying to a turtle…”hey take off your coat and stay awhile.”  (The coat being it’s shell.)  It would probably be a bit freaked and wonder why you would want to take it’s protection away, but you are just seeing that the protection is like a heavy armor that the turtle is carrying around and could use a rest, there is nothing for it to protect itself from around you, maybe out in the world, but around you, it is safe. 

But how do you help the turtle to see this?  To give the turtle a rest.  Possible you could point around to the turtle and show it that there is nothing around it that would hurt it, that all the things that it thinks it has had to protect itself from are not currently here.  Could you have the turtle look around it’s surroundings and see that?  How would you put the turtle at ease when it has been hurt and attacked before?

Time and patience are what help turtles and humans to see that it is okay to take the shell off and to sit back and relax for a bit without all that heavy weight holding it down.  It might kick it’s feet up and you might rub on them and share things that you have been afraid to say because someone laughed at you or made you feel badly about things that your Heart Knows.

Once you have begun to every once in awhile, take your shell/shoes off, when you have found the company of those that have also had shells but have found that they can take them off and just play and be who they are without protection.  Then when you go back into the world, you still have your shell/body/armor to wear but it might not be so thick and it might not be so heavy.

Once this has happened for you, you begin to be it for others.  The other day I was at the college and I don’t usually like to be in a crowd of a lot of people…but that is how it was.  Sometimes I will see myself as a tree and inside the tree is a core of Light that runs up and down through and out of me.  If there is an un-comfortableness growing then, like yesterday, sometimes the focus will go to that Light … it is like a pole that can be held onto when things get uncomfortable. 

As this was happening a person came up to me and said he was having anxiety, which was funny because the same was in me but I shared with him where the attention was and although I am not sure that he understood what I was saying…he eased up and started sharing with my why he was going to school and there was a feeling inside of holding that Space for us both to be in…like I was the one holding onto the Light Pole within and both of us were experiencing it.  These things are not easy to explain, and I cannot speak for the other person that he experienced anything that I am sharing, however, he did seem to relax and begin to openly share about his life…it seems both our guards went down and neither of us seemed to be aware of the crowd that was still there (which was about 80 people).

So this is sort of like the shell coming off…maybe only momentarily, but when it comes off there is a relaxing and a lightening of the load and the anxiety goes down.  Now maybe if I had not been focused on the Light before he came over to me…it might have been a completely different experience but it went the way it did and now I get to share that.  We all have that because we are all in IT.  But we are not all aware of it and sometimes think that it can be found in things outside of us.  But if you find someone, like I have that is a Light House and shines a Light on you until you begin to see that you are also a Light House...

Then you are a very lucky Turtle :o)

THE NOW MOMENT

The Now Moment is such a simple truthful phrase and often completely missed out on.  How often are you completely aware of the Moment you are In?  Take a look, what is actually going on around you?  Do you find that the thoughts that appear are telling you all the things you have to get done, that you are not doing?  Can you be some other place than where you are?  Let's look honestly.  Are you focused on what is going on around you, in front of you or is the attention on the thoughts about the past or the future?  You can only have thoughts about the past or the future because thoughts are not in the Present Moment.  Even a thought about the Present Moment, is in the past (can you see that?).  

The Present Moment cannot be thought.  To think it...is to not be Aware of it.  To become Aware of it, begin to pay attention to what you are actually doing, not what you think you should be doing.  If you should be doing it, you would be, so don't worry about what you should be doing and pay attention to what you are.

You are in the perfect Moment, Present Moment you can be in (that is why it is the Present/Gift).  If you weren't supposed to be in the moment that you find yourself in, you would be somewhere else (your life is not of your doing...but you cannot see this until you begin to pay attention).  It is not about stopping thoughts, they will still be there, it's refocusing the attention on what is happening, not what is thought about what is happening and not what is thought about what could or could not happen.  This is not something to "think" about (even though you probably will). This is something to be Aware of.  Be Aware of the Life you are In.