Monthly Archives: February 2015

CAUSE AND EFFECT

If you believe that everything that ever existed, exists now, or will exist futurely, already exists this and every instant, if you believe that linear time does not exist outside the human realm, where they hop about like fleas, then it is clear there is no such thing as cause and effect.

A cause has to come before an effect, no? But if everything exists now and forever, the idea of before and after is rendered moot.

Cause and effect depends on time

A student comes to class late and a little breathless. “I’m sorry I’m late. I tripped. I’m such a klutz!”

“Did you trip because you’re a klutz or are you a klutz because you tripped?” This makes the class laugh since they could both be true.

Try this reversal with any other cause and effect pairing you have invested your belief in.

Brian is clever because he passed the bar exam the first time he tried, or, Brian passed the bar exam the first time because he is clever?

There is no discernible difference between these two statements. It makes no difference which one is supposed to have caused the other. Rather, we should think of these two ideas, cleverness and passing the bar exam on the first try, as peacefully co-existing in some vector space somewhere, linked together by the act of thinking.

Kathy keeps supporting her son because he’s irresponsible with money, or, Kathy’s son is irresponsible with money because she keeps supporting him.

It matters not at all which condition is supposed to have caused the other, although you could spend a long time guessing there. It only matters that you have linked these two ideas together by thinking about them repeatedly. You have created this reality with your thought. Subject any judgment you have to this questioning, and you will see how you formed it yourself, with your mind.

What the mind has created, the mind can also dissolve.

If linear time doesn’t exist, and cause and effect are meaningless, why are you so married to these ideas? Why do you love them so much? Remember all the essay questions that asked you to weigh the causes and effects of this and that.

Was the First World War caused by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, or the militarization of Germany, or the neural wiring of Kaiser Wilhelm, or the Entente Cordiale, or some other thing you don’t even know about? What caused it the most? What caused it the least? On and on you go, until you realize it’s an endless game, trying to determine what caused what. Rather, they happened and happen still, together. All these events are strands of the same yarn. Everything exists together, infinitely.

I am ready to question my beliefs

ROLES: EXAMINE EACH ONE

All the roles you play in life are limiting. They may feel limiting at the time you play them. Sometimes other people see you as that role and nothing more. You might be the job you do, a wonderful parent, a busybody, an anti-social recluse, the other woman, a hopeless alcoholic, a bad son, a gossip, or any other label you have accepted. The roles you play in life can be regarded as costumes your being has decided to try on.

Roles are costumes

Costumes can be discarded

After you have ceased to play a role, sooner or later, it will seem limiting to you. When you have left a role behind, your being expands like a foot growing out of an old shoe. As important as any role may have felt at the time you were playing it, it fails to contain all of who you are.

No role could.

You are more than this. Whether it was a role you enjoyed playing and excelled at, or whether you fought against it in misery, once it is put by, the being transcends it, thereafter looking back as the graduate might look back on nursery school.

You may completely identify with a role yourself: teacher, mother, sailor, athlete. But whether you assume a role joyfully, or resist it mightily, no role is big enough to contain the real you. The real you can choose to perform these functions beautifully, but always remains more than any function.

So examine each role you assume or resist, giving it your loving attention if you so choose, but never forget the real you is larger than any role.

Roles that bring unhappiness or unease however small, must be dropped.

You would not wear a shoe that bothered your foot.

Never continue in a job you don’t enjoy

Johnny Carson

SUFFERING: IT’S UP TO YOU

Suffering is optional. Everything that you think someone else did to you, or is doing to you, that is your own decision. That is you doing to you. That someone else is only your agent. That husband who cheated on you long ago, who you have never forgiven, who makes you bitter and angry, he is only the agent you have chosen for your suffering. But it is not necessary. There is not an iron chain of causality between you and the past.

Were you to realize this, and cast off your chain, this agent you have chosen would either disappear quietly from your life, or would change with you in peace. He is not the cause of your suffering.

Suffering is optional

That mother who never appreciated you properly, who undermined you constantly, against whom you have kept a grudge all these years, she is only your agent, so that you can project out those feelings of anger and inadequacy. Could you now make yourself immune to her barbs? Could you let them fall uselessly to the ground? Could you see her words as water washing over your back?

Could you forgive her for her blindness?

Could you forgive yourself for seeing her as blind?

Everything you think of changes, because you think of it

That husband who left you with kids to raise, that wife who never lets you forget you failed, everyone neglectful, ungrateful, disappointing, any focus you have for your misery, could you invite them out into the light, and question them?

Can you now let go of all anger towards anyone? They were only your agents.

That feeling of entrapment, of being in the wrong situation, of being wasted, I let all of that go now. I forgive everyone that I believed did me wrong. It was me that was wrong. Thank you. I am ready to go forward now.

What if you let them go, all those roles you chose out of some harmful old script you didn’t even write. That pattern of adultery that runs through your family, what if you just stopped picking it up? Stopped reacting to it? Let it go. Realize that the only energy it has is what you are now giving to it. It doesn’t really even exist. Dismiss these agents of your own self-loathing and fear. These are only words. Go free. The past does not exist. If it does, where is it but in your mind?

From this moment on, I choose only goodness and simplicity in my life. I recognize that what seem to be other people are only the agents of my decisions, and I now decide to let my agents rest with me, in simplicity and peace.

Transformative change

WORLD, CREATED BY YOU

Alone in a world you made yourself

You are all alone in a world you made yourself. Everything that you see, the problems, the dysfunction, all is a reflection of you. All the things you are afraid of, that keep you awake in the night and wake you in the morning with a vague, pervading unease, all the anxiety you ever felt, all are the creation of your own mind, your own psyche, whatever you want to call yourself.

There is a part of you that creates, throwing out images before yourself like a fisherman casting out a net. You throw these ideas out so forcefully by your constant thinking, that they are the only reality you can admit. It is not possible to admit any reality that you have not thought of first.

For example, if you think that everyone cheats, and everyone has his price, then your mind, so instructed, will seek out examples of cheating and corruption. What the mind looks for, it easily finds. You will find examples wherever you look. Similarly, if you think people are innately good and kind, then your mind, so instructed, will notice examples of goodness and kindness everywhere.

You bring both your blessings and your ills upon yourself, by your thinking.

You have the power to change this at any time.

You have the power to change this at any time. You can get off the mad roller coaster of fear, depression and anxiety. You can be out of the grip of seemingly random events controlling your emotional state. You can regain a sense of calm and balance.

Who would not want this?

The answer lies in making conscious decisions about your life instead of allowing unconscious programming to control you. If you have not made the decision not to live by unconscious programming, then that is what you are doing. That is how you all live, until you decide not to. That is the meaning of original sin.

We are the puppets of our unconscious programming. We accept judgments about ourselves without even questioning them.

“I’m a procrastinator; that’s how I’ve always been.”

“I have a hard time trusting people. It’s because of my parents’ divorce.”

“My older sister is the smart one.”

Just naming a thought gives you the consciousness to examine it dispassionately and take it apart. For example, take “I’m a procrastinator.” Is this a thought you have about yourself? Examine it. Do you like being a procrastinator? Have there ever been any problems with that? Have you missed out on opportunities because of it? Have you always been one? No? Why did you become one? Why do you mention it now? Are you proud of it? And so on. Question that thought for at least seventeen seconds, which is how long it takes to form a new neural connection securely. In this way is a judgment weakened.

You can destroy any illusion by examining it

You are all alone in a world you created. For you is that a frightening, depressing thought? Do you like the world you created? Does it scare you? Do your fears make you tense?

Or is that a joyful thought, a thought that truly lifts you up because it gives you the power to remake your world to be more peaceful and enjoyable than before? You have the power to make it better. What is this but the best news you could ever hear? You need not be a pawn of unconscious programming who gets to the end of physical life before he figures out he got it all wrong.

The choice is always yours. Any moment you are alive, you can weaken negative thoughts. You can consciously remind yourself to choose positive programming. You can choose the thoughts you want to have. You can choose the adjectives, nouns, and pronouns you want to apply to yourself.

Ah Love, could Thou and I with Fate conspire

To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire!

Would we not shatter it to bits, and then

Remold it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

JUDGMENTS: LET THEM GO

Comparisons are judgments

All comparisons are judgments. “She is prettier than her sister.” “You are a better worker than before.” “My group is more intelligent than other groups.” Consequently, do not respond to comparisons. Deny the ego.

Adjectives are judgments

All adjectives are judgments: brown, small, complicated. Do not get attached to adjectives and the attributes they are the signposts for. You spend your lives in pursuit of certain labels that you have attached value to: educated, cool, fashionable, smart, sympathetic, has good taste, and so on. But why have you attached value to any of them? It can only be because you think they would make you better, because you presently are not perfect.

How much better it is to turn inward and know that what you desire to be, you already are. Then there is no striving. Only peace.

You also get stuck like glue to adjectives whose meanings you don’t enjoy: stressed, nervous, unattractive, uninteresting, and then defend them. How many times have you heard someone going to bat for negative traits of themselves?

“That’s just me. That’s the way I am.”

I let go what does not serve

A monarch butterfly is emerging fresh and new from its chrysalis, as we emerge fresh and new when we eschew judgments

Photo by Bankim Desai on Unsplash

Has there ever been a negative aspect you have embraced in this way? “I’m impatient with slow people. I’ve always been like this. My mother was the same way…” and on and on, an endless spiral of justifications, rationalizations, hairsplitting details, minute comparisons, all the beloved domain of the ego. There you go again, completely taken over by the surface personality that you think you are.

What if instead you looked at that root thought, whatever it might be, whether “I am fat”, or “I can’t speak in public”, or “I have nothing to say.” Shine the light of your consciousness on it. Focus close up on that thought. See that thought wriggle with discomfort in your attention. Then ask that thought, “Do you really even have to be here?”

Sometimes, a quick glimpse of illumination from the light of the inner being which asks this question, is enough to send the thought packing, like a thief who has been caught red-handed.

Let me have no other desire than to do good

Image by Janice De Santis

THE PAST: TRANSCEND IT

The past does not even exist. If it does, where is it?

There is no need to let the past define you.

Everyone remembers the past differently. How can it be said to exist independently?

It is said that they who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it. But by remembering it, are you not repeating it? By taking out those past images and memories and holding onto them, strengthening them, polishing them like beads on a rosary, do you not also give energy to them?

Do you want to be always digging over the past?

Transcend the past

The right way to deal with the past is to transcend it. “Transcend” means “rise above”. That person you were, who the past happened to, does not exist anymore in the same form. All that was unnecessary, cumbersome, awkward and slowing you down, all of that has been left at the side of the road hundreds of miles and many years ago. That person you were had things happen to her. This person you are now, observes and chooses experiences.

I allow myself to be changed for the better

What weighed you down in the past?

All judgments, large and small. If you believe that everyone who gets a divorce is bad, then that puts you in a dichotomy. Either you are good and do not divorce, even though you may be perpetuating a dangerous or miserable situation, or you divorce and are bad. All the negative feelings you had projected outwards onto the divorced ones, you must now take upon yourself. Your judgment has come to beat you with a stick.

Let us eschew judgments. If we knew the difficulties and despair that most of us live with, we would praise each other just for being here. We judge a situation only when we cannot see all of it, anyway. When we know the truth, we do not judge. Let us replace judgments with a desire for enlightenment.

What else ties you to the past? All disagreements, grudges and arguments. Be free of them all at once. Forgive the other for whatever you think she did to you. Realize that was part of who you thought she was then. It was your need to think of her that way and use her for an agent, so you could nurse hurt and anger. You would like now to free both of you from the past.

Hurl the past away from you.

What else weighs you down? All unwanted, useless possessions. All the junk that is clogging your spaces, everything that you don’t presently use but cannot let go of. Each thing you hold onto represents a fear.

We all cling to worthless possessions out of fear. “But I might need it some day.” “It has sentimental value.” “So and so gave it to me.”

We are all hoarders until we decide not to be.

Keep life spare

If it is not a part of your now experience, if it does not belong to the person you wish to be, discard it. Sell it, give it away, pass it along, become a channel, open up a flow. Doing this, you open the way for real value to arrive.

Throw away all negative evaluations of yourself; they are worthless junk from the past. Who cares if you’re a cheater like your father, or not? Let us transcend the past. Choices are not dichotomies, as you like to think. “Either I go to college and get a fulfilling job and am happy, or I will not go and be a failure forever.” No.

The number of paths in front of you at any time is always infinite. If it even exists in your imagination, it exists somewhere and is capable of manifesting into this physical world. Why would you be linked to the binary choice of either living out the past, or not?

Forget it instead. Let the dead bury their dead.

Let us rise above it

Noël Coward

Let Me Maximize You

Transformational change: the least you need to know