Monday, June 29, 2009

Synchronicity in a False Universe

It has been a week of incredible synchronicity. There is a nice sangha legend (kind of like an urban legend, but known in the spiritual community, not "on the street") that once you experience Self-realization everything is rosey and things come together perfectly. While they might come together perfectly, I think there is a disconnect about what it is meant by "perfect." From the unawakened perspective that likely is attached to a favorable outcome, one that is desired by the individual. But from the Enlightened perspective, EVERYTHING is perfect, so that something that would have been viewed as a failure or shortcoming from the yet-to-be-Awakened perspective, it would be viewed as EXACTLY the way it is supposed to be and there is no desire to have it any other way.

Well, I've yet to pop so I'm coming from the yet-to-be-Awakened perspective. That means I desire and enjoy when things line up in a manner that would traditionally be viewed as "good." For example, on Friday I was coming on to a six day stretch of being on call for United. There was one person on for 3 days ahead of me on the list and there were at least a half dozen people who were on for 4-5 days that were after me. That meant that any long trip that was coming up, I should have gotten the assignment.

When I looked at the open flying, there were at least four trips open for Saturday and Sunday that were 4-5 days long, which meant that barring a miracle, I was going to have to fly out on Saturday or Sunday for 4-5 days. This was quite a bummer as Kitty had been gone for 10 days on the Richard Moss Radical Aliveness retreat and was set to come home on Sunday. Things were lined up so that I would be leaving on a trip right when she would be returning... hence the bummer.

If we are lined up for flying there is a mechanism that allows us to influence which trip we get assigned to, and I considered looking at the list and figuring out how to get on the trip that would return me as soon as possible. But something in me said "You've been trying to take your hands off the tiller and become a leaf on a stream. Let go now and see what happens." It wasn't the B-movie "voice in the head" thing, it was more of a knowingness that I should just detach from the outcome and let things happen as they will.

I shit you not, about an hour and a half after I did this the Crew Desk called and said that they had an assignment for me. They needed a pilot to go fly as a passenger to Denver on Friday night and show up at the training center to be the second pilot for another pilot who was receiving training. The assignment would officially end around 2 pm on Saturday, and I would fly back, on the clock, Saturday evening. As I need a reasonable amount of time off before a long Pacific trip, that basically guaranteed that I would not be going on a long trip on Sunday and would really be back in the hot seat on Monday.

Here's the amazing part. With me having 6 days (which is the most days you can be on call before you have to schedule a 24 hour period off), there is no way that I should have been assigned a 2 day trip. There were many people behind me on the list where that would have made more sense, and one of our scheduling rules is that they assign the trips to someone who has that many days on or one day more. (In other words, if a 3 day trip comes open, they have to find the first person that has "3 or 4" days on in a row. This saves the people with 6 days on for the longer trips, if there are any. By assigning me the 2 day trip, it essentially shot me for any long trips this time on call. Again, to assign me this trip, there had to be some extrordinary circumstances to assign it to me, a pilot with 6 days of availability.

Here's how incredible this allowed things to play out. By going on this assignment on Friday and getting done rather early on Saturday, I was able to fly out to LAX, rent a car and drive 1.5 hours to Ojai to spend the evening with the Richard Moss group on the last night of the retreat. I was then able to help Kitty drive back from Ojai which was really nice as she was emotionally wrung out (which is exactly what we expected and wanted from the retreat.) I basically had Sunday off so even if I were to get an assignment during this on call period, I was safe until Monday.

Had the assignment come on Saturday, I would have been able to see Kitty Sunday evening but I would have missed the last night of the retreat and she would have had to drive home by herself. If it got done on Friday and not Saturday, I would have been in the hot seat on Sunday and I would have probably had to fly a trip and be gone for 4-5 more days. Had they not given me this assignment at all, I would have definitley flown one of the myriad trips that were already open and, again, I would have been gone for several days.

Why was I assigned that trip? I don't know. I didn't ask. I received it with astonishment and gratitude and did not question why. Many things like this have been happening, and they seem to increase in frequency and impact with the amount of focus I have had on this process. I do realize that I need to look at everything as being synchronistic, not just the things that my persona would find handy, "lucky," or beneficial. I need to look at everything as being perfect and find the perfection in everything. But it is interesting how frequently these "favorable" things have been happening.

Now, how do I reconcile all of this with the fact that nothing is real, this is all a dream? Well, I know that I'm focused on Awakening and so I'm trying to mold my vessel to be as open and conforming to that reality. So I've been fundamentally denying EVERYTHING, labeling it all as untrue, unreal.

I do realize, however, that those that have Self-realized do end up reentering into the dream world and playing the game. Why play the game if it is all just an illusion, a dream of the pure Awareness? Honestly, if put on the spot, I'd have to admit that I don't know why. But I would suspect along with Self-realization comes the realization that pure Awareness is facinated with the dream and it is our purpose to live out the dream. So if we're going to play our part in this charade, we might as well understand the rules of the game.

The game has meaning only because we give it meaning. For the unawakened, we do that by accepting this perspective as "reality." For the Self-realized, I'm guessing they do that by coming back in the game and utlizing their ego-shell to function within the dream. Since we do give the game meaning, its interesting to note how synchronicity works.

So that is how I'm reconciling my interest in figuring it out while still working on integrating the "everyting is false" concept. For now, I feel a need to keep the focus on the "everyting is false" track and once I become that and cease to just intellectualize it, I'll know then whether or not I should spend any time at all on topics like this.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Acknowledging it is ALL A LIE

I'm to the part where I'm actually acknowledging that everything that I can possibly think is untrue, based on a false foundation. When I say that I'm "acknowledging" it, I am transitioning from intellectualizing it as a possibility and I am assimilating it into my personal paradigm. Rather, since this will ultimately destroy my entire personal paradigm, I'm replacing my entire paradigm with this one concept.

Initially, once I chose to accept the concept it was quite easy to implement. Reject everything. Anything that anyone could say or that I could read, hear, or think would be false. For the time being, allow the destructive techniques to remain as they allowed me to find concepts that had remained hidden until looked at from another, more oblique angle. But eventually even those tools would have to fall to the prime directive of "Everything is false, nothing is true."

I said initially it was quite easy, and I realized that I'm still very much in the initial phase. But as I dig deeper into the more basic, fundamental concepts, it is harder and harder to reject them.

For example, it was easy for me to give up angels, spirits, and ETs. Not that I don't think there is life on other planets within this construct of reality, it's just that I don't believe that this construct of reality IS real. Therefore, no real universe, no real planets for the ETs to really exist on, poof, they are gone to me. Angels and disassociated spirits have always been external to me and I have not given them much reality in my universe anyhow, so, poof, without much thought, they, too were gone.

Mind you, not that none of this isn't real within the context of this universe and the dimensons that individual choose to perceive beyond this one. They all seem to work fine, all the explanations as to why they must exist are seemingly logical and rational (at least as far along as I'm willing to invest my brainpower to investigate.) I'm not denying that there isn't something like ESP in this world, in this reality. What I am denying is THIS REALITY, and in doing so, the rest of it is null and void as well.

But I was talking with Rich Belsky about the concepts of souls. At least for now, he has an affinity for the concept of a soul, that there is some thread that binds our individual incarnations together from lifetime to lifetime. This concept is what allows us to utilize the concept of karma. After all, if there is no soul connecting our past and future lives together, how would karma from a past life be a player?

As I understand it, when I look inward, I will find a void. A total emptiness of self. As I also currently understand it, according to general and basic non-dualism (which I will also have to drop during this massacre of ideas and thought), EVERYTHING, manifested (in this universe) and unmanifested, is contained in the one Source/God/Whathaveyou. Even when you condense it down into the tiniest speck, like how the scientists paint a picture of the beginning of the Big Bang, there is still something there. Likely not physically, but there is still the Source, the Divine Consciousness, the creator of it all. So if the Divinity is within me, and the Source is at the center of me, and when I look inward to the core I find nothing, and if everything is FALSE, then what of the Source itself. Is it not Consciousness? Is that not something? Is that NOT nothing?

So I find myself stuck at the paradox between the Void that I will find at the center of my Self and the fact that I am Divinity and the Source of EVERYTHING, even if that source is Pure Awareness and nothing else, it is still SOMETHING not NOTHING.

Rich hung in there with all of my rambling and paradoxical pondering. It was beautiful having someone there who had challenging questions that I could not answer, questions that had me questioning the idea that everything is False. I'm still operating under that idea, but Rich was very helpful in uncovering concepts that were not so easily torn apart by the everything is false approach.

When we ended our time together we discussed the idea of attacking the concept "Everything is false, nothing is true" with the "Everything is false" sword. That's a paradox that I'll probably be working with today.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Adyashanti - A VERY Clear Speaker

In my quest for finding material about tearing everything down to the core I discovered Adyashanti. I am easily connected to what he is saying when I watch his videos. He makes them available for free on YouTube or on his own website, Adyashanti.org. I would highly recommend diving into a few of these videos to see if what he's saying resonates with you. It's a rare, clear voice speaking to a small crowd that can presently get what he's saying. You either get it and love it or you don't and you'll quickly drop it.

YouTube Adyashanti Channel

Videos on Adyashanti.org

Audio on Adyashanti.org

Douglas Harding & The Headless Way

I have stumbled into another teacher that espouses methods to tear down the identity of self and even Self to leave only the Truth. Douglas Harding developed The Headless Way. It is an experiential process of seeing Who you really are, a la Ramana Maharshi.

The following is taken from www.TheHeadlessWay.org:


THE HEADLESS WAY

The Headless Way offers you a practical, user-friendly way to see Who you really are. This method was developed by the philosopher Douglas Harding. At the heart of this approach are the Experiments - awareness exercises that guide your attention directly to your deepest identity.


Who Are You?

Religion’s Answer
The world’s great mystics have a common message:

"There is a Reality which is Indivisible, One, Alone, the Source and Being of all; not a thing, nor even a mind, but pure Spirit or clear Consciousness; and we are That and nothing but That, for That is our true Nature; and the only way to find It is to look steadily within, where are to be found utmost peace, unfading joy, and eternal life itself." (From Religions of the World by Douglas Harding)

Science’s Answer
What you are depends on the range of the observer. At several metres, more or less, you are human, but at closer ranges you are cells, molecules, atoms, particles… Viewed from further away your body becomes absorbed into the rest of society, life, the planet, the star, the galaxy… Science’s objective view of you – zooming towards and away from you - reveals a hierarchically organized system of layers that is alive at every level, intelligent and beautiful. Thus you have many layers, like an onion. You need every one of these layers to exist. Your human identity, vital and important as it is, is just one of these layers. You are also sub-human and supra-human. (See interactive panel on the left. See also: The Hierarchy of Heaven & Earth.)

What are you at the Centre of your many layers? The scientist cannot say because she can only observe you from a distance. However close she gets to you, she remains outside you. What or Who you really are, the Ground of your Being, remains a mystery.

Other People’s Answer
Other people are like the scientist because they cannot see what you are at Centre either, only what you are peripherally. Reflecting back to you what they make of you, their feedback is about you as a person.

Your Answer
You are not distant from yourself, not outside yourself. You – and you alone - are therefore perfectly placed to see what you are at Centre. All you have to do is look.

How do you look into your Centre?
The Experiments direct your attention inwards to your centre. They reveal the One you really are, the One at the heart of your life. Take some time now to explore them.

When you have carried out the experiments, explore the rest of the website. You will find articles, short films, quotations, comments, interviews and more… You can also listen to the Audio Introduction, subscribe to the e-Course in Seeing, contribute to the Discussion Forum and, if you like, let us know your response to seeing Who you really are.

Quotation
Over the past [sixty] years a truly contemporary and Western way of 'seeing into one's Nature' or 'Enlightenment' has been developing. Though in essence the same as Zen, Sufism, and other spiritual disciplines, this way proceeds in an unusually down-to-earth fashion. It claims that modern man is more likely to see Who he really is in a minute of active experimentation than in years of reading, lecture-attending, thinking, ritual observances, and passive meditation of the traditional sort. Instead of these, it uses a variety of simple, non-verbal, fact-finding tests, all of them asking: how do I look to myself? They direct my attention to my blind spot - to the space I occupy, to what's given right here at the Centre of my universe, to what it's like being 1st-person singular, present tense. (From The Headless Way, a leaflet by Douglas Harding.)

Richard Rose & The Albigen System

Several months ago while talking with Rich Hughes and Buck, I heard one or both of them say that they were done with finding new ideas to add on to their personal paradigms and were working on tearing everything down, throwing everything they could not prove as "truth" away to the curb. I recall then that I understood intellectually what they were saying, but it was not a technique or process that I was using at that time.

In the last month several concepts have finally sunk in. These days I'm having trouble identifying anything at all that is "true." The more I read and learn the more I realize how much more there is to read and learn if I want to master the dreamworld. Fortunately, I am simultaneously owning the concept that my main objective is not about mastering the dreamworld but in transcending it all together, so I don't have to worry about reading and learning about all that.

So my quest for the last month or so has been to seek out material that will help me throw out all of the rest of the material in my mind. If it is a system of BUILDING my paradigm, I don't want it. If it is a DECONSTRUCTIVE system, that is what I'm currently interested in.

To that end, my reading and web-surfing has led me to an interesting character named Richard Rose. There's a lot written about this guy, although this is the first time that I've really taken notice of him. (I think I landed on a website referring to him sometime late last year, but it did not ping strong on my radar then.) I'm becoming quite familiar with the mainstream authors and teachers (Tolle, Hawkins, J. Krishnamurti, Richard Moss, Leonard Jacobsen, and the lighter crowd of Dyer/Katie/Williamson etc.) I'm starting to find my way to the anti-teachers. Along with Ramana Maharshi, Richard Rose seems to come with favorable recommendations and he's reasonably well published so it's cheap and easy to acquire his material.

His first book is named after his method: The Albigen System. I found a page that gives you a good idea of what his approach is. Here is an excerpt from the site:

[i]"The Albigen System is a unique path created several decades ago by teacher/author Richard Rose when he first began working with those who wished to find a retreat from error and a vector that would bring them to a full realization of Truth or Enlightenment. Based on his book, The Albigen Papers, along with personal notes and observations he held about the psychology of observation and action, he “prescribed” a ways and means of “Becoming” as he put it – so that one could identify their obstacles and chief feature in order to become the Truth. He would often refer to the phrase, “becoming as a little child,” to bring about the understanding that a person must rid themselves of their “barnacles and bugs” to even begin to develop an intuition and clarity which would eventually bring them to an understanding of their essential nature.

The Albigen System aims directly at Self-Realization or Enlightenment. It is a practical, subtractive system. It is not jaded by political correctness, positive thinking, devotion, dogma or ritual. It is simply based on going beyond illusion, beginning with the self. His system of meditation is likewise simply based on going within and observing your thoughts, humiliations, errors and egos with a detached “massive indifference.” It does not seek for definitions of Truth but instead encourages the individual to develop a vector that leads away from untruth. He referred to this as the Maximum Reversal System. By uncovering and acknowledging the illusions, untruths and inconsistencies in our own lives we stand a chance of stumbling upon our true nature and our very Source."[/i]

CLICK HERE to read more about this process. There's a ton of free resources to be had. Basically, this material is focused on you realizing there is no truth to be understood in this human form, it is to be experienced, and to experience it you need to realize that there is no self and there is no Self... there is absolutely nothing.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Why do we meet and discuss?

I can genuinely accept that I am not going to be able to think my way to Enlightenment. Why then do we meet in sangha and discuss things at all? Why don't we just meet and meditate together? I mean, if my ultimate objective is Self-realization, why talk at all?

Anything that is said is ultimately a bunch of BS. Even that from Jim and Kevin, and I believe they'd heartily agree. Yeah, it points more in the direction of the truth than anything else, but if it isn't true, then it's false, and so we're all sitting around lying to each other whether we mean to or not.

I know I'm setting myself up for a typical koan-ic response, but if nothing that I can say or think is real, and if all I need to do is realize that the self that I've identified with for over forty years is just a dream and my real Self is the source of the ENTIRE dream, then why can't I just get that and stop thinking about every thing else?

I know, I know: well get it then, already, and let's move on to the "Well, how's Enlightenment working for you, Sean?" days. I just haven't FIGURED OUT (yes, I KNOW) how to make the leap from ACCEPTING that to KNOWING that. Which is EXACTLY why I come do the dang Sunday Sanghas. Freaking circular logic.

So I come to the Sunday Sanghas without any expectation of what I'm going to say or hear, only in hopes that one of these days I WILL get it. Until then I will enjoy Jim's haikus and artwork, become befuddled by the the devilish observations made by the Enlightened ones, and listen to me and the rest of the somnambulists as we continue to talk in our sleep. Grrrr.