Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights — Page 92
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one striking at the root."
-- British proverb
Look at this cube until you experience a Gestalt shift.
Notice how radical of a shift in perspective your mind can experience with this very simple image. That gives you a little taste of what we mean when we say that reality is relative.
Now imagine, if you will, that existence itself is a relative notion. If you look at an object one way, it appears to exist. If you look at it another way, it ceases to exist. Poof! What was once a solid, physical object now looks like a hollow mirage. Where did the physicality go? Where did the cube above go? Its existence was a matter of perspective to being with.
"Do not blame God for having created the tiger, but thank him for not having given it wings."
-- Indian proverb
I'm thinking I'll start a recurring series here on the blog of thought-provoking proverbs from all around the world. I've got hundreds of juicy ones to share. Short and simple. Hope they inspire you.
Here's an additional cool way to think about this week's video topic (What Is The Devil):
If you're a math-inclined thinker, you'll appreciate the following equations:
- Devil = unconsciousness = ego = self = evil = selfishness = ignorance = division
- God = consciousness = True Self = No-self = love = selflessness = wisdom = unity
- Devil = 1/consciousness
- God = 1/Devil
What the 3rd equation means is, the less consciousness you have, the more of a devil you are. As consciousness approaches infinity, the devil approaches zero (annihilation). Good to know.
What the 4th equation means is, the Devil literally is the division of God! It's no accident that some of the Devil's favorite tools include division, separation, fragmentation, and partiality. Because God is EVERYTHING — a unity, a totality — God is best approached through holism. So the Devil does the exact opposite, sowing division and separation everywhere he can. Since the Devil is literally a division within God, it makes perfect sense.
Notice that anywhere you find fragmentation, you also find unconsciousness and mayhem. Also notice, that the nature of mind and thought is to fragment reality. An accident? No! The Devil's breeding ground is the mind! That's where he roosts. Because where else can a concept exist?
Also notice that our society tends to fragment reality. Look at the majority of science. Look at the majority of spirituality. Look at partisan politics. Look at how our schools compartmentalize education. Is this an accident? No! The Devil knows that controlling social institutions is of vital importance to his scheme. Since falsehood can only exist in a large society if it goes unnoticed, that can only happen if everyone is bought in to the same tacit delusion. So the Devil takes great care to corrupt all social institutions, biasing them against holism and towards division. When everyone is solely focused on his or her own little department, the Devil is happy. Now he can flourish.
But you must never forget that: God = Devil. Unity means, the bringing together of all divisions. So don't make the mistake of pitting God against the Devil. God IS the Devil. Form is formlessness, formlessness is form. At least if you've experienced nondual consciousness. If you've never experienced nondual consciousness, this won't make sense for now. That's okay. Work towards it. Start by observing the Devil working in you.
Evil is just ignorant love.
It is possible to become conscious of what you were before you were born.
Seriously.
Reflect on the monstrous significance of that for moment.
How is this possible?
It's an outrageous claim. And as far as you know, it could be false. But what if it's true? What would that mean for your entire worldview?
Can you try to imagine the possible ramifications of such a discovery on your life?
Mainstream culture is not openminded enough to acknowledge such a possibility. Don't let that deter you.
"One who knows not who he is and to what end he was born; what kind of world this is and with whom he is associated therein; one who cannot distinguish Good and Evil, Beauty and Foulness, Truth and Falsehood, will never follow Reason in shaping his desires and impulses and repulsions, but will in one word go about deaf and blind. Is there anything new in all this? Is not this ignorance the cause of all the mistakes and mischances of men since the human race began?"
-- Epictetus
Here are some important explications of the limits of the naive realist paradigm which has infested science. Sheldrake is dead-on, and actually isn't radical enough in his critiques of materialism. Science will go through a major revolution in the next 100 years. Rationalists, materialists, and linear logical thinkers will be left on the wrong side of history. In a sense they already have. They just don't know it yet.
You're home all alone, you've just downed your dose, it's gonna take 30 minutes to come up, and now you're all anxious. Bad mood, negative thoughts, doubts. "Oh no!!! Will this be a bad trip?"
It doesn't have to be! Go play some loud pop music and dance to it like a fool. Really get into it! Dance bitch! Don't hold back. At least 10-20 minutes of dancing. Silly hand movements, big smile, act like animal, break a sweat, the works.
Don't underestimate the power of this technique. It works like a charm. Use your body to create good emotions. I do this pretty much every time I trip. It really helps put me in the right frame of mind.
Here's the key: don't sit there thinking, "Should I do it? Will dancing like a fool really help me?" Just do it! Don't keep sitting there on your ass worrying. Just get up, turn on the music, and dance. Do not let yourself judge the technique. Trust the process. It will work.
But after the dancing is done (no more than 20 minutes), go sit down and be very still. You don't want to be dancing through the bulk of your trip. Your mood will have been lifted. Now sit and mindfully observe as much of your trip as possible. Relax, breathe, and get curious about the nature of reality. The more still and contemplative you can be, the better. The dancing is just for getting rid of that pesky pre-trip anxiety, or if you're starting to spiral out of control into some deep depressive thoughts.
This technique also works well if you have a friend who's tripping but starts to freak out. Go dance with him/her for 10 minutes and you'll likely break them out of the negative thought spiral.
If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper [assumes you're reading this in a book]. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow, and without trees we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either...
If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, nothing can grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger's father and mother are in it too...
You cannot point out one thing that is not here — time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper... As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding
Reality is an infinitely interconnected web of differences, where each "node" exerts a force on infinitely many other nodes, and so on, ad infinitum. There is no central node, such that the web is perfectly decentralized. Such that you cannot even say that the web exists, because "existence" is just one more node in the web. Such that "the web" is one more node in the web.
Which is why you can't grasp it with mind. The only way to grasp it is to become the whole thing.
What you must understand about me and my work is that I see myself as a researcher and explorer, not a master.
I'm a very conceptual guy. I love theory and concepts. I love thinking about life. I am a philosopher in the literal sense of that word: a lover of wisdom. And so what I do is I explore the conceptual landscape. I am especially passionate about understanding concepts about the deepest aspects of life and what it means to be human. My work is to try to catalogue as many of the most profound concepts as I can find. But this is a distinctly separate task from embodying or mastering the concepts.
My prime interest is in knowing the big picture. Of course I try to embody much of what I study, but that is not my prime passion or strength. Being good at embodying wisdom is different from exploring, cataloguing, organizing, thinking about, and communicating it. Some people are born to be Zen masters, some people are born to be more talkative and flowery. Maybe in the future I will completely outgrow my passion for concepts, simply going full Zen. Maybe not. I don't know yet.
But until I do, you need to keep in mind that just because I catalogue a thousand concepts doesn't mean I have mastered them all. I am not trying to give that impression. I am just trying to fulfill my cataloguing duties. But as I do that, many people will get the wrong impression, taking me to be something greater than I am. Always remember that talking about wisdom is a lot easier than embodying it in all aspects of one's life. And I love to talk.
Despite how I can sometimes come off, I am just a humble philosopher. I struggle with embodying this stuff just as much as you. I never want you to get the idea that the stuff I talk about is easy. This is the hardest work a human can do. Which is why virtually nobody does it.