You have No Control over Reality

[Davino]

Warning, don't misunderstand what I will say. You should have a life purpose and create a profound meaning and vision for yourself. You should control your life and make it go where you want it to go, to the best of your abilities.

However, as a matter of fact you have no control over what happens in the Universe. Or said in other words, your egoic control over reality is very limited. See all the ways you try to manipulate reality, all the planing and organising you do in your own mind yet Reality is a wild beast and it is hard to tame. In a way reality is Sovereign and it will not bend its head to you unless it wants. The individual is very limited, one has to recognize this. One should definitely exert oneself to the limit of its own capacities and volition. However, one's ability to consciously manipulate the space of individual possibilities in order to align reality with personal biases is indeed very limited.

I realized this while travelling with my girl and some friends. You can be planning for months a trip yet the trip NEVER goes according to plan. This doesn't mean you shouldn't plan, this means that one needs to accept the fact that life won't happen according to plan and that the control one has is limited. Reality always surprises you and flows in whatever direction it wants despite your best efforts. It is not only that you wanted A but happened B, it is that finally Φ ends happening. Something you would never had thought of in hundreds of years, the permutations are mind blowing. We like to think greatly of ourselves but everything is in a very fine equilibrum. These unexpected things end up adding one to each other, as Φ happened now I must do Ψ and so on. When I reflect back, there where times that my whole week changed because of this. Something happened then I couldn't make the landry which then meant a reschedule of a future task and I end up at the end of the week reflecting at all the unpredictable phenomena that came to be. Has this ever happened to you?

This awakening surprisingly gives a lot of peace and not powerlessness, as an individual you do your best and leave the rest to the universe. You cannot do more honestly and therefore you learn to be flexible. With will persistence you know you will end up succeeding but you are aware that your power is finite and limited. You stop holding rigid believes about how reality may or may not unfold and in a way start trusting how the wave is flowing while surfing in it.

Having said this, I know many people will post their predefined answer and won't bother to read what I just said. It's fine I sometimes do the same.

 

Exercise:

Next time you plan and reality surprises you, become aware of it, notice it deeply and reflect how it came to be. It is a juicy insight. The understanding of control is the last barrier to effortless beingness.

Edited March 1 by Davino

[Razard86]

4 hours ago, Davino said:

Warning, don't misunderstand what I will say. You should have a life purpose and create a profound meaning and vision for yourself. You should control your life and make it go where you want it to go, to the best of your abilities.

However, as a matter of fact you have no control over what happens in the Universe. Or said in other words, your egoic control over reality is very limited. See all the ways you try to manipulate reality, all the planing and organising you do in your own mind yet Reality is a wild beast and it is hard to tame. In a way reality is Sovereign and it will not bend its head to you unless it wants. The individual is very limited, one has to recognize this. One should definitely exert oneself to the limit of its own capacities and volition. However, one's ability to consciously manipulate the space of individual possibilities in order to align reality with personal biases is indeed very limited.

I realized this while travelling with my girl and some friends. You can be planning for months a trip yet the trip NEVER goes according to plan. This doesn't mean you shouldn't plan, this means that one needs to accept the fact that life won't happen according to plan and that the control one has is limited. Reality always surprises you and flows in whatever direction it wants despite your best efforts. It is not only that you wanted A but happened B, it is that finally Φ ends happening. Something you would never had thought of in hundreds of years, the permutations are mind blowing. We like to think greatly of ourselves but everything is in a very fine equilibrum. These unexpected things end up adding one to each other, as Φ happened now I must do Ψ and so on. When I reflect back, there where times that my whole week changed because of this. Something happened then I couldn't make the landry which then meant a reschedule of a future task and I end up at the end of the week reflecting at all the unpredictable phenomena that came to be. Has this ever happened to you?

This awakening surprisingly gives a lot of peace and not powerlessness, as an individual you do your best and leave the rest to the universe. You cannot do more honestly and therefore you learn to be flexible. With will persistence you know you will end up succeeding but you are aware that your power is finite and limited. You stop holding rigid believes about how reality may or may not unfold and in a way start trusting how the wave is flowing while you surf in it.

Having said this, I know many people will post their predefined answer and won't bother to read what I just said. It's fine I sometimes do the same.

 

Exercise:

Next time you plan and reality surprises you, become aware of it, notice it deeply and reflect how it came to be. It is a juicy insight. The understanding of control is the last barrier to effortless beingness.

Welcome to the first day of your life. Yes! Reality does what it wants and the human identity must bow to its unlimited power. 

[Arthogaan]

2:53 "it's completely out of control!!!" ~ Leo Gura

 

[Princess Arabia]

1 hour ago, Razard86 said:

Welcome to the first day of your life. Yes! Reality does what it wants and the human identity must bow to its unlimited power. 

Yes, I loved how you said that and included the word identity. It's the identity we have chosen to become that will reflect back to us our experiences. It's not what we want that we get but who we are being that unfolds. The script has been written and circumstances will unfold in our lives that goes with that script based on whom we have become. 

 

[Princess Arabia]

Love this post.

[Davino]

6 hours ago, Arthogaan said:

2:53 "it's completely out of control!!!" ~ Leo Gura

In the awakening I understood that moment. The beauty of being out of control, an absolute madman. It's really liberating

I have lost my head, I kept saying, while looking at myself in the mirror

This insight has been arround for many time, I'm happy it's coming to fruition.

[Water by the River]

One doesn't even control which thought emerges next, or its content.

Any thought/feeling, especially I-feelings/I-thoughts/Identities happen by itself. One can not control which thought/feeling arises next. There is just the illusion-thought (also arising by itself) that one could. Which itself is a thought which "one" didn't control.

A thought is a "universal" event triggered by causes & conditions of the totality of all form/manifestation/Infinite Being. The feeling/thinking that "I am" is just an arising happening in True Being, but not controlled by anything separate/ego.

There are just clusters of thoughts/sensations taking owernship for other clusters of sensations (like thoughts/feelings/bodily sensations), happening and moving by itself in True Infinite Being/Reality.

On an Absolute Level, it is that radical.

That should be a little hint that the separate-self/individuality/ego doesn't even exist in the first place in the way one normally perceives/feels it, but is just a brilliantly made illusion.

It is an illusion of the highest degree happening in True Infinite Being. 

And that True Being can understand that, and realize its True Infinite Being.

 

Selling Water by the River

[Davino]

@Water by the River

If you had to condense all your teachings for Enlightenment/Awakening what would you say?

After many time reading your posts I haven't still gotten your full essence and message. I'm curious to know, what is it that you are into really?

[Water by the River]

4 minutes ago, Davino said:

If you had to condense all your teachings for Enlightenment/Awakening what would you say?

Find out what you really are. And what Reality is.

And if these are two separate "things", or just one Reality.

And if there can be anything "beyond" or besides Reality, like "two Realities" (which is of course a contradiction in itself, but normally not examined). Or if that Reality is infinite, nondual, one (or alone) without a second, all there is.

And then if this Infinite Reality/Being is what one really is, or the thing that says "I" in the mindstream.

Something along these lines...

8 minutes ago, Davino said:

After many time reading your posts I haven't still gotten your full essence and message. I'm curious to know, what is it that you are into really?

Finding out if one really controls which thought emerges next in ones mindstream is a good investigation-question. Specifically, do you control which thought you think next and its content? And the next. And the next.

That investigation gives a very good indication on wether the entitity one thinks one is really controls which kind of thought/feeling emerges next.

Do I control which thought/feeling emerges next in the mindstream?

Maybe play around with that a little if you are interested.

[Yimpa]

2 minutes ago, Water by the River said:

Find out what you really are. And what Reality is.

Heh, it’s like asking an iPhone to use the Find My iPhone feature on itself. But hey, maybe in the future it’ll be possible, who knows!

 

[Water by the River]

4 minutes ago, Yimpa said:

Heh, it’s like asking an iPhone to use the Find My iPhone feature on itself. But hey, maybe in the future it’ll be possible, who knows!

That why it is a Koan. Which any pointer to Reality is. Some longer, some shorter.

He asked for:

10 minutes ago, Water by the River said:

If you had to condense

In Zen they also give "What is the sound of one hand clapping". Points to the same Reality, has the same answer. Which is a realization of Infinite Being, presented &  combined with a nondual Awakened Awareness state.

 

So the explanation above was so to say to premium-deluxe-royale-maximum-explanation-Koan. Which guarantees a smack from the Head-Zen-Roshi for too much explanation & conceptual-overkill-Koan(s), but hey... I am not a pure Zen non-conceptual aficionado.

And if somebody wants a filibuster yours truly is not exactly opposed to that also... 

[Yimpa]

1 minute ago, Water by the River said:

In Zen they also give "What is the sound of one hand clapping". Points to the same Reality, has the same answer. Which is a realization of Infinite Being, presented &  combined with a nondual Awakened Awareness state.

This pointer has honestly bewildered me for the longest time. That was, until I realized that the difference between one hand clapping compared to two or eight or 99 is all relative, yet all experienced in the same fundamental Consciousness.

[Water by the River]

Just now, Yimpa said:

This pointer has honestly bewildered me for the longest time. That was, until I realized that the difference between one hand clapping compared to two or eight or 99 is all relative, yet all experienced in the same fundamental Consciousness.

Concentration on that Koan long enoug literally results in an Awakened nondual state of Infinite Being, and doing it even longer it can result in Realization of True Being. And that IS the sound of the one hand clapping, literally.

What a wonderful & relaxed teaching tool for the Roshi. Imagine: No explanation needs to be given. No discussion with the disciple. No questions. One can easily reject any answer to the Koan-solution by just shaking the head. Only the right state of Infinite Impersonal Being will pass... and then its already done.

Sounds a bit one-dimensional (if only done like described above, which of course it isn't done purely like that, but there is a tendency for it often) for this time & age? Yup, same here... But in the right setting works perfectly fine.

 

[cjoseph90]

Great reminder very true

[Davino]

2 hours ago, Water by the River said:

Find out what you really are. And what Reality is.

And if these are two separate "things", or just one Reality.

And if there can be anything "beyond" or besides Reality, like "two Realities" (which is of course a contradiction in itself, but normally not examined). Or if that Reality is infinite, nondual, one (or alone) without a second, all there is.

And then if this Infinite Reality/Being is what one really is, or the thing that says "I" in the mindstream.

That is very clear, thank you. That was a good explanation 

 

What do you say about God?

[Davino]

2 hours ago, Yimpa said:

This pointer has honestly bewildered me for the longest time. That was, until I realized that the difference between one hand clapping compared to two or eight or 99 is all relative, yet all experienced in the same fundamental Consciousness.

You outconsciousned the Koan but you didn't get it

It's simple. All dualities are both hands clapping. When one realizes infinite oneness you clap with yourself. And that makes a thunderbolt noise, hence the sound, there is a real sound of collapse, actually and factually. One day while I was in the bus this realization hit me out of the blue, it was a real Zen moment indeed. Years forgotten the koan resolved itself spontaneously. It was at that moment that I understood the Koan methdology for Awakening.

[Razard86]

9 hours ago, Princess Arabia said:

Yes, I loved how you said that and included the word identity. It's the identity we have chosen to become that will reflect back to us our experiences. It's not what we want that we get but who we are being that unfolds. The script has been written and circumstances will unfold in our lives that goes with that script based on whom we have become. 

 

We can communicate with reality, and it communicates with us unknowingly until we raise our awareness so we do have so control over how things get done, just not direct control. So the human identity can communicate with reality but reality chooses how it will unfold. And yes who we have become is important to how things unfold. Got to maintain that realism LOL.

[jimwell]

The original post is mostly true. And it's very frustrating.

The universe will do whatever it wants, regardless of your approval or disapproval.

I can even go further and claim that even your control, intentions, and willpower are not yours and not inside your limits, but actually the universe's. Everything is inside the universe's limit. 

You and I are fully at the mercy of the universe or God. And everything which has happened, is happening, and will happen is not random. It all materialized, is materializing, and will materialize according to every detail the universe has laid out. That's the no-self-predeterminism awakening I experienced many years ago which horrified me for a few days.  

The impact on me was significant because I had never heard about any form of awakening. I didn't even know what spirituality is. I feared I might have gone crazy, in addition to enduring extreme anxiety and depression.

But recently, I realized I just can't surrender to God's Will. I intuit that God created the ego for a good reason. Neglecting the ego's will and desires is a big error.

When I intensely desire something, I devote all my energy, time, and intelligence, putting every atom of my existence on the line. I will die trying to materialize it. The Universe's Will, though much bigger and more powerful than mine, becomes less significant.  

[Davino]

30 minutes ago, jimwell said:

The impact on me was significant because I had never heard about any form of awakening. I didn't even know what spirituality is.

Wild

[Davino]

30 minutes ago, jimwell said:

But recently, I realized I just can't surrender to God's Will. I intuit that God created the ego for a good reason. Neglecting the ego's will and desires is a big error.

God and Ego are one. God is One. You are God. I am God. God is One