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.

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

REJECTION

Everyone likes the “good” feelings, but the ones that are not so good “feeling” like rejection are quickly moved away from (if not by most than at least it has been the experience here) that when a feeling that isn’t “good” appears there is a moving (in a sense) away from it.  But lately the focus has been on “staying a little longer in the un-comfortableness.” 

Rejection is one that makes movement away from the un-comfortableness.  It seems heart-breaking to be rejected right?  Like when the feeling of rejection comes up, it is as if it is a personal attack on the character, that we aren’t good enough or what we are so proud of isn’t good enough, some variation of not good enough.  However, rejection also comes to serve as a great gift, if one allows it.  Nothing teaches quicker than a broken heart and the deepest teaching comes from not attempting to repair it, but allowing it to be broken.  And rejection can be a darn good heart-breaker. 

Not fixing a broken heart goes against the grain of conditioning to do that, however the grain of conditioning is one of making a hard shell so that one doesn’t get hurt, where as, allowing the heart break of rejection and disappointment, keeps the heart open and raw.  Yes, it is tender and yes it does hurt for some time, but it is alive, it is not hardened in a box and dead, afraid of what might come and attack its fortess.

Rejection also reveals the depth of an attachment to something.  The more rejection stings, the more you are able to see that you are holding on to something and that it may not be serving to hold on.  Maybe you are holding on to a belief that isn’t serving you, a person or a product a dogma.  If you really believe in something, like beyond belief, then rejection has very little power.  But if you are doubtful or not sure of something and someone rejects what you come to them with, then it or you will fall apart.  But if what you are coming towards one with is fully alive in you, without doubt, without question, than rejection doesn’t mean anything.  You are not out to prove anything, you are just being how you are being and bringing that into the world and if it is accepted great and if not that is okay too.

Recently, a rejection made something more obvious, something that has been many times overlooked but rejection allowed for the possibility to see it in another way.  There is an example called “Finger Waving” from the Primer.  It is when the attention is placed on the object over what the object is in.  Let’s use the domain of Truth, if one were attempting to convince another that they are IN Truth and the person hearing it didn’t believe what was being said, and rejected it as a possibility, but the one that was sharing it was not grounded (in a sense) in their Knowing, they may attempt to go on  to convince the other that it is true.  However, one that Knows that it is True, is not attempting to convince anyone of how things Are, that would be silly :o)  They have the attention not on the finger (person or rejection) but on what it all appears IN and in that there is no one to convince of anything or reject or take personal. 

It has taken a long, long time for the Knowing of the “finger waving” to appear.  For a long time, there were just attempts to understand it and waving it in front of the face and why wont this work, what is being pointed too?  However, once you grasp that the finger is in IT and the gaze can be placed upon it in any moment, the world is the finger, the universe is the finger, but the attention can easily, once it is Seen, be placed upon what all that appears IN.  It doesn’t mean that rejection still wont hurt, but it is allowed to hurt, or one is willing to be hurt, while the attention is placed on what “hurt” appears IN.

“Be willing to have your heart broken, again and again and again.”  ~Wayne Austin