Recipe for happiness

Be kind.
Put others before self - constantly.
Have compassion for all - constantly.
And when constantly is hard - as much as you can, more and more.

~ Lokeshvara

Rejoining the mainstream

I've rarely been mainstream before. I have for so long sought out the odd, the eccentric. From games to religions, I have deliberately chosen the obscure. I have indeed pursued exotic philosophies and taken tea with weird gods.

And why? Was it because I once agreed with a quote I read long ago that the majority is, more often than not, wrong, and that I have a greater chance of finding truth away from the beaten track? Or was it because by so doing and mastering such a subject, I could simply become a big fish in a small pond?

A different wind blows through me now and drives me to action. I renounce the position of outlier and rejoin the main bell curve. I turn away from the shallows to plunge into the main current. Yet at the same time I stay like the lotus, supported by the mud but bursting through the water into the sunshine - in the world but not of the world.

Why am I doing this? Because in the mainstream I find the most suffering; I find the greatest numbers of people that need help. And even if I can make only a small difference, I have a greater chance of making that difference. I know this may seem presumptuous to some, but where would be the compassion in turning my back?

"Water nourishes all things. Cold ice and hot vapour both withhold the gift. The way of warmth is the way of life." I know I have been fire and ice for too long and helped too few. It is time for me to leave the extremes. It is time for me to become as simple and as straightforward as water.

Kindness

There is a saying, coined by a writer exactly my age, "Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty".

I don't agree!

There is even a "Random Acts of Kindness Day" as an unofficial holiday celebrated every September 1 in New Zealand where people are asked to do random acts of kindness for strangers or people they know.

Random?! On one day a year?! What are people doing the rest of the time!?

Kindness is something that can pervade a whole lifetime. Given the choice, and most people have the choice most of the time, why would anyone want to do anything else?

Time to talk

"Water nourishes all things.
Cold ice and hot vapour both withhold the gift.
The way of warmth is the way of life."

So says the Kuan Yin Oracle once more. And how appropriate given the last entry two months ago. Perhaps it is time to talk again, without renouncing simplicity, as who will benefit from an eternal silence?

I read Solobill Laville's "11 Presentations on no-time: No past, present or future." I have never been drawn to meditating on time. But I am been prodded to do so it seems. First I read today a post on an email list claiming that suffering comes from clinging to the present, and now Solobill's essay. My instant reaction to each was disagreement, but why? Because I live in the Now. I do so because 35 years ago, a mahatma told me, as related here, that "If you can be happy now, you can always be happy." I found out how to achieve that... and it works, in seeing contradiction to the email list statement.

I started to frame responses in my mind to each. And then I thought better of it. Solobill has the gentlest way of putting things over and I am so often aware of the problems of words meaning different things to different people. I saw no use in sorting out the terminology separately in each case.

So I went instead to experience, to the all consuming Seeing as Being exercises described here and here (and plus/minus a few posts). I figured that if there is no sense of time or timelessness or no-time in that state, then it was either conjecture or not something relevant to my current needs.

And so I slip into Being Seeing. Raw power consumes me. And then I see, almost behind everything, layers - layers of existence of everything through time, like seeing an extra spacial dimension. I catch just an instant of no separation and then...

I am out of practice! I hold this only for a short span, but the consciousness continues a little and I see my hands typing this with the time dimension as space as extra dimensions overlaid on them... I think of vapour trails but it doesn't come close.

I will meditate on this experience. Perhaps I will touch the Core again and recreate it or investigate further. But it's perfectly possible, as I did when I made the switch from Seeing as Being to Seeing as an Enlightened Being, that I may say "Very nice but there's no point to this ('this' being Seeing as Being, whether looking at time or not) - not for me, not now. It neither removes my suffering nor does it help me remove anyone else's. And that's unlike when I engage in Seeing as an Enlightened Being, which has both practical use and is a consciousness possible and usable all the time."

Simplicity

"First a crystal, cold and brilliant.
Then a sheet, thin and brittle.
Ice forms - releasing your burden, unfreezing your simplicity."

So says the Kuan Yin Oracle. And so it is with Play as Being. In both cases, it's an apparent paradox. Ice forms, but something else becomes unfrozen. You seem to fill your life with more activity (with the "9 seconds every 15 minutes" Play as Being practice), yet your life becomes less cluttered. How is this?

Burdens become held in suspension. Perspectives become clearer. A sense of proportion based on what really matters takes over. But putting aside esoteric insights for a moment, it means, very simply, that you are more ready to face where you find yourself, day to day.

Simple words

Yes it has been a long time since the last update of this blog. That will happen, dear reader, from time to time. There are many reasons why this happens. Busy-ness is often a factor of course. Laziness (who me?) may be too. Complacency (surely not!) may be another.

Of these, complacency is the most interesting for me at the moment. But is it actually complacency? When, through one's practice, one reaches a level of experience and understanding that has far exceeded anything personally experienced in the past, and when one gains deep and lasting insight into what I can only describe as my true home - a state of enlightened being, sometimes the question becomes, "No rush. Being is all. What else is there to write about?"

And yet that is what I say when I'm not in that state, not when I am in it! When in that state of enlightened being - and I dwelt there for a while whilst writing this - I have a sense of clarity and deep purpose - perhaps pure will - that totally belies the apparent hippie-like attitude of the above!

There are many people who may read this and pick it apart for evidence of duality in the writing as a pointer to the writer's lack of pure experience. To that I say, "Crap!" Is it possible to write successfully about Being or the experience of Becoming? No. These are fingers pointing at the moon. And I will be the last to cloak my words in the impenetrable intellectual claptrap used by so many. They carve out a self-selecting audience and provide only the opportunity for mental masturbation. What use is that to the average reader? And since those words are futile to describe "what is", yet simple words will suffice to hint at paths and to encourage, why not stick with simple words?

I'll do my best. :)

Thoughts on ESBS

• The drowned kitty look is slowly receding! [See previous post.] The effects are still with me though and I am still only firing on 2 cylinders. This precious human form is so fragile. One part of me is grateful for the medications, and is resigned to the obvious dependency I now seem to have on them. But behind that, and overarching all, another part of me cruises through the illusion and continues to see things as they really are.
• Had a long chat about ESBS with Piet Hut last night. It's amazing how experience unites us but words can separate! It's easy to jump on the limitations of a metaphor as though that's what the speaker really means, when actually they don't. When two people have one experience, something that is indivisible, it's expression... well, I'm falling over myself already! There's more work to do here. Piet and I have arrived at the same experience - maybe - by complementary routes. Or have we? Ha ha! Being can itself guide that next step.
• There's a box on the floor in the middle of the kitchen. Its contents are wonderful, amazing, - I've sampled them several times - and ... I keep on walking round the box the long way. Skirting it. Acknowledging its presence but putting off opening it again. Dancing around it. Jumping over it. In fact doing anything else other than sitting on the floor beside it, opening the lid and diving right inside. The label on the box says, "ESBS". What is stopping me? It's only partly comforting to know that the person who sent me the box also, on occasion, does the same dance! What is going on?
• When Being sees, there are no edges. No longer can I point to a separate thing. Neither is there an I to point. I thought of the lenticular cloud. It appears solid and stationary. You think you can point to it and say, "It's there!" But it is constantly dissolving on its trailing edge and being added to on its leading edge. Its presence is an illusion everyone can see. Click here to see an animation of a lenticular cloud.
  
• I previously touched on seeming to have the awareness of the thoughts of other enlightened beings while in the Enlightened state. Rarefied stuff eh!? Now I wonder whether that was because I shared the same mental continuum or mindstream with these other beings. If so, what does that make me?!