Paranoia or Psychic Perception – Maybe Both. Here’s the contemplation…
Alright, I’ll admit. Today wants to end on a sour note, but I won’t let it! All was going well until late in the day, my granddaughter came home from school in a snit (she’s only 9 after all, has a head-cold and should probably be given benefit of the doubt) followed momentarily by the downstairs couple who forgot they weren’t out in the middle of the field in India as they came in from work. Indoor voices people! Geesh! And while reading this stuff might be having the superior, significantly-spiritual type clucking the tongue away and shaking their head, maybe even with a sly smile on their face—let’s not rush to judgment about these things.
Is it my paranoia or true psychic perceptions that cringe when realizing some folks have taken that smile that starts to form at the side of their mouth when they hear these challenges that the mountain yogi me dealing with this daily distraction stuff! Ha! One person said, “Easy to do it when you’re up in the mountains in seclusion but not so easy NOW, is it?” As if I’m now experiencing life for the very first time!
Wasn’t born yesterday my friends and I’ve been there, done that—after all, I raised three teen-age daughters on my own.
I come back into it now, however, realizing exactly what it all is—as before—but on much deeper levels. Now I see it as mind being irritated, mind being restless, mind being frustrated (no me) and what a view of it all I have! Can’t get this kind of stuff in a monastery you know!
For it’s the mind that is irritated—not me! And I’d have not come this far without my granddaughter and the noisy couple from India. Never would I have had this kind of ‘in your face’ stuff at these levels and in the perfect timing for me to reach these understandings with it all. Beautiful actually—just beautiful.
All kinds of things happen—the just do. Do I necessarily cause them to happen? Life. It just happens. We choose our reaction—the Buddha taught all that jazz.
Oh, I can hear the spiritually significant tongue-clucker now—influenced by all the new age book mumbo-jumbo. “You attracted your circumstances; it’s your karma!” Well, partially true if we consider our desire to evolve perhaps; but even if we don’t. Life unfolds as a matter of circumstances that we simply are privy to witness and we can only change our attitude about it. (Unless we want to be arrested for assault and battery—a bit of humor.)
What matters is the attitude and not the events—the world is full of desires and fears and pain and suffering and people generally reacting to it all the time. Today, my granddaughter and more times in the past few months than I can count, my downstairs neighbors are perfect examples.
And me too. My desire is for quiet and like the Rolling Stones as well as the Buddha have said, “Can’t get no — satisfaction.” Not from the outer world.
So where is it—it is beyond the world, even beyond the inner world—beyond mind.
Oh, you could say I’ve gone out of my mind and you’d be totally correct on some levels. I’ve realized that place that is beyond mind and all from humans pushing me there in so many ways so-to-speak.
I’ve also gotten hold of memory—the meaning. We mistake that we are this group of memories that we have created an ego structure out of. I’ve given this a good deal of thought since the Indians below me triggered a number of childhood memories and stimulated a fair number of unpleasant dreams, a few out-and-out nightmares. This causes one to question the nature of memory and dreams; but mostly memory in this case since hold a few and identify ourselves thus creating structure out of those aspects of mind and then say, “This is me; who I am”.
If our memories were our true identity then you’d think we’d remember more than we do—such as what you had for dinner last week or what you did on the 4th of last June. Unless something memorable, you don’t remember. What IS memorable, we structure an identity out it and call it “me”. It’s okay for getting by here but we have to remember it is illusion—and the ego’s reading this are screaming in your heads, “Not me! I AM REAL.” That’s okay; I wasn’t always ready for this understanding either.
Maybe it’s all about me getting ready for the inevitable event that we all face someday—death. It’s going to be easier to let go of this identity structure if we’ve realized all along it wasn’t real in the first place.
Here’s something C said in reply to a question about wanting to live, “To live, to die—what meaningless words are these! When you see me alive, I’m dead. When you see me dead, I’m alive. How muddied up you are!”
Enough about death—before I loose subscribers! People don’t like this subject. About memory, I like this quote: Use memory, don’t let memory use you! I should put that one on Facebook. Anyway, family stuff being triggered is all for the purpose of realizing its memory that I’m overly identified with—it’s all been very good spiritual fodder or grist for the mill as the saying goes. We need that grist to keep ourselves in true awareness—so tongue-cluckers who think you’ve got it made in the shade because you’ve read all the books and had a few evolutionary experiences and intellectually think you’ve GOT IT, maybe not so much or there’s always deeper layers and this has been a good one, still is.
The bottom line is we do not need to be set free—we already are. It is our identification with our body and the structure we created from memory that we over-identify as “me” and our desires that keep us going round and round again, lifetime-to-lifetime, which keeps us from the clarity that we were never born and never die.
All I can say to spiritually significant elite-ist tongue-cluckers is that understanding this intellectually is one thing and living it in the face of human intensity and applying it—well, how deep down the rabbit hole do we go? With each intense experience, I have deeper realizations that do not come from a book but from my own experience, my own mind but not even there… from a place where I am totally out of my mind. Hard to describe unless you’ve been there, done that.
I’m grateful when I can be in the right place with it all and when not, I realize I will be—eventually, all in good time. Patience and perseverance, virtues!
By the way, I am celebrating walking normally this week! I can wear a regular shoe and barely limp at all; as the illusionary body heals and repairs my broken foot illusion here! Have a great week dear friends of Light!
(Excuse me now while i light illusionary candles to absorb the illusionary cooking smells from the illusionary neighbors! laughing as I go… one more desire released… no longer desire to visit India! See, everything has a great purpose! ha ha)
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