This Quest To Attain Self Realization

[Phable Omsri]

7.15.18  Greetings to everyone on this Actualized.org Community Forum

Out of darkness, into the light.  From the grossest ignorance into the bliss of transcendental realization.  So once upon a time there was a Phable.  Has anyone read Lois Lowry's book "The Giver"? More or less The Giver was the only one in the entire tribe who saw in color, and everyone else only saw in black and white.  He was the repository of emotions for the tribe.  The Giver felt all the emotions that the Tribe would not or could not feel.  That is a good description about how I feel about my role in life.  I am a storykeeper.  I have kept a journal of my entire journey over the last 18 years.  

7.17.18  Buddha said what?!!!

So Buddha is translated as having said something along the lines of "Attachment to desire is the cause of all suffering.  Abandon desire, abandon suffering!"  And so that is quite the conundrum. However with some thought we can realize that total lack of desire is not lack of suffering either because if you refuse to breathe, drink, eat, if you don't move enough not to get bedsores, or if you refuse to defecate and urinate away from your body far enough so that you don't get sick from your own biological excretions and if you fail to move your body out of harms way if such circumstances arise, then you will suffocate, die of dehydration, starve, your flesh will dissolve, the stench will be unbearable and you will not avert harm... so total lack of desire is not total lack of suffering either. 

But lets say that you just maintain the basic human biological processes at their most simple level, only that which is absolutely required for maintaining homeostasis, and you just sat there at the most simple level, then you would not suffer very much altogether, you would have very few responsibilities or demands upon one.  Many of the burdens that we associate with life in the modern world would not be yours. 

But in the modern society we have many vain and preposterous desires in addition to this most basic human maintenance.  And every new desire added onto the basic foundation of actual human "needs" requires effort and energy to manifest and these desires will bring suffering if one does not gain them.  Inevitably if one does no emotional alchemy then one gets angry to the same degree that they had desire for the thing denied.  The vain desire itself, the striving, seeking, plotting, planning, struggling, conniving, the disappointment at not achieving ones desire, & the anger that follows are all energetically expensive.  One must digest extra food to do all those extra activities.  And if one is thwarted then it constitutes a tremendous waste of energy all together, and the anger and frustration can actually be detrimental to a person on their own.  Not only did one not get what one wants, but one is afflicted and degraded by the entire process on a number of levels.  

Every desire we can surrender gives us energy to do something else.  The fewer desires one has, the less the external environment can control and manipulate a person.  The 5 Regulative Principles of Religious Life are generally : no illicit sex, no intoxication, no gambling, no meat eating, and no stockpiling or hoarding of gold.  If one follows these principles one will have alot of time to meditate and to do service. 

There is a story I heard about Alexander "The Great" when he was marching around conquering the world.  At a certain point he met a man sitting beneath a tree in a loincloth.  Alexander stopped his army and went and sat with the man.  Alexander asked the man if there was anything that Alexander could give him or do for him.  And the man said, "No, I am fine the way I am am.  There is nothing that I need."  And Alexander was astounded at this and he said, "You know what?  I am the master of all I survey but you have something that I want.  I have the extent of my entire empire but you have inner peace."  I don't know if this is a true story or not but all in all its a good allegory to illustrate this sort of Buddhic reasoning I am describing.          

[Phable Omsri]

7.25.18  

So the process of Self Realization is an endeavor of constant balance and imbalance and rebalance. 

One is often certain when one is wrong.  This causes people to set up their camp in illusion.  A concept can seem real to one when actually the concept is intrinsically false.  Wrong and false are interesting concepts.  It denotes that the mind can achieve some sort of accuracy or inaccuracy depending on the circumstances.  That what one believes can sometimes fail to align with what actually exists.  And even this concept of things "actually" existing is interesting.  It means that sometimes a person can perceive things that are not what a person believes they perceive.  This insinuates the existence of a realm that is not subject to our human perceptions about it. 

Subjective / Objective / & Absolute Truth.  Science wishes  with all its heart that there be an existence or reality that is not subject to human perceptions, a realm of Objective and Absolute Truths that is not violated by human misconceptions or the influence of human attention.  Unfortunately for science, this is not how things "Objectively or Absolutely Work".  Instead, the reality is that "attention is a form of force", and that human attention collapses the waveform of the quantum state of particles into a single particle outcome. 

As Robert Anton Wilson said, "What The Thinker thinks, The Prover proves."  This means that the various biases of the scientist are at work bringing the various results the scientist wishes to see into reality.  This interaction does not override the basic formula and mathematics of nature, instead this interaction simply augments it.  For instance a person cannot force something unnatural into nature, a person can only abide by the laws of nature to shape potential outcomes.  There is no "supernatural".  There are only physics that people do not yet comprehend the ramifications of.  

What I am saying is that the bad scientist is cheerleading for their theory and they are endeavoring with every cell and particle of their bodies to prove what they imagine to be the formulas of nature.  This causes the bad scientist to create experiments that shape the perceptions of the observer to prove to a questioning mind their theory.  This process can limit the factors that negate the theory.  The bad scientist can often refuse to accept what the data shows, or can manipulate the data to conform to the theory.      

A "good scientist" is a person who has no bias towards their own beliefs when endeavoring to prove their theory.  In fact good science is based on determining all the reasons why one's beliefs are inaccurate.  It is a reversal to the common state of pretending knowledge and expertise.  Instead one insists upon being proven wrong and if one cannot be proven wrong by any method than one begins to establish a foundation of knowledge.

Its difficult because along this path of learning one is often forced to accept that one's perceptions and beliefs about things are inaccurate.  Admitting that you are wrong can be very hard, especially if one is highly invested in proving themselves right.  And so Bad Science is a realm fraught with egos that are sometimes willing to be proven wrong and other times highly defensive of their illusionary positions.  Bad Science is as full of myths and false concepts as any other belief system.