Arrogance is Bliss – The Quest for Peace: Part 1

Updated and added to 24th Feb 2013.

Updated and added to 28^th Feb

Updated and added to 1st March 2013 

Updated and added to 3rd March 

Updated and added to 12th March 
Updated and added to 19th March
Updated and added to 18th June 2013 
Updated and added to 31st July 2013 
Updated and added to Sept 2013
Updated and added to Nov 2013
ditto Jan 2014
Part One finished, started part2 June 2014 
Part Two -all done 9th February 2015

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Feb 2015 - re-reading....comments:-

To be a book it needs a lot of work. It rambles, it meanders, sometimes it seems to communicate and sometimes it gets lost in it's own enthusiasm!

The reason is because it's not really a book, it's a spiritual blog! It was written as a report of my regular meditation practice from the start in 2012.

If each section is taken as that day's or week's idea then it can read without worrying about too much continuity!  However, some of the sections could be tidied up or re-written.
I have stopped writing in Feb 2015 because I feel the work's message, such that it is, has been delivered.


Have a look through this rough and ready blog/book and see if it is useful!

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Arrogance is Bliss – The Quest for Peace

INTRODUCTION to the book

I am nicely into the book and writing all this stuff about spirituality (19^th Feb 2013). But the method to find Peace I have employed, no-matter what its origin, be it a compilation or “nothing new” seems to work. This for westerners these days seems important – workability. I’ve tried “working on” on a couple of people who one could pigeon hole as “seekers” with amazing results.

I was surprised not by my own peculiar abilities but by the efficacy of this method of looking at things.

I feel confident one on one I can show you Peace and I strongly suspect that by the time I have finished a Finding Peace Methodology will have been formulated. The Peace I refer to is not perhaps Enlightenment itself as that is a “Self realized mind” (see the book!) and a qualification given to oneself by oneself : the Peace here is definitely on the road to Enlightenment and has been termed “Awakening” elsewhere -  that’s how you might classify it by way of introduction.

The book itself is not a statement of my views but is as my blog is: a record of my spiritual evolution. Rather than go back and rewrite the sentences in the early sections pertaining to my personal mental condition - I have let them be. As the work chugs along you will see my inner Peace grow and my views perhaps crystalize or become more exacting compared to the earlier writing. The book thus seems to cycle through a set of ideas and reveal more and more within them, because that what I am doing! You can thus join me on this path and as such I hope it may hit home better for you. The book is as it is; some chapters are long, others short and matters arise not in a logical book-type way but as they arose for me. Part of the method then is to ease someone into the subject rather than attacking with sound bites that should conclude rather than commence. I find stand-alone comments like “The past does not exist” are unhelpful for modern thinkers.

If you are sick of reading books on Enlightenment or watching videos of Masters and thinking “happy for you” because at the end little changed for you, then perhaps though many, many have had results with them, you may now find my methods more hard hitting and workable for you.

The key is not just to read but to proceed along the lines I describe. Nothing is to gain from reading this book without doing your own research and finding your own truth in the meditation and the methodology I am constructing. The book is only as my truth and as such it could be entirely useless to you and hence its origin and core is to ask us to answer “What is my truth?”

You will note I have done this to Serve – the information is free- and written under the alias Paloma Porta though she does live in a relatively tiny virtual world on the Internet.

I love you, I have always loved you, I will always love you,

Paloma Porta

Grammar and Syntax Warning!

I do not believe in "correct" English. The root idea of language is communication and it should worship that god and not grammar. And. Most importantly. Much clearer communication can be gained thereby. Especially for those of us without the skills to pass on an idea and concurrently always comply with the correct rules of sentence structure.

I know this can be difficult some some people- can you be forgiving?

American conversational English is built on slang. Go figure. I warmly embrace it. It may have saved us from a written style of sentence format, of which and from which simple ideas though not lost, only buried, commonly are found at depths they do not warrant! (Flowery English is bad to understand quick).

Even for a skilled author, I think bending the rules of the language can add to the arsenal.

I wonder at what point prose approaches the poetry (bad English).  And I wonder if my subject can only be written in poems.

An Introduction to Paloma Porta and The Quest

(I am British (London) – to help comprehension, I have tried to write in a more worldly common English rather than … employ the peculiarly prosaic colloquial!

Hello.

My name is Paloma Porta and I am not a real person. I am a person in a virtual world called Second Life. Naturally the me in what we call “real life” is someone else – but we have our minds in common.

Second Life is sort of an online game; but the game is Life – A Second Life. I stumbled into it in late 2007 and signed up in the best traditions of a technophobe, wondering what it was. One starts an “avatar” and off you go! I chose the name I have as I had the idea to be mistaken for a Spanish person and thus increase my practise in that language which I was learning at that time. I never really did get very good in Spanish though I can converse somewhat – but I did get quite good at Second Life!

The reason I am writing this as Paloma Porta is because I do not want the real life recognition for the work and because I know many more people in Second Life than in “real life” to talk to about it so as to continue any spiritual or teaching path I may be on. Neither do I want to be paid for these scribblings. At this time (January 2013) I feel the information such as it is would better serve as something freely available.

Paloma is a Leo and the real life me comes in as Pisces, not that astrology is big in my life but one must concede it mirrors the world and people very accurately in the hands of an expert and not a newspaper column.  Paloma is extrovert and friendly, the real life me is less so. In fact the real life me has suffered from a worsening malaise that could be called depression and this is something I began to address in Second Life.

As a platform Second Life is super. It’s a bit like eBay because things once considered rare can be suddenly found in plenty. But in Second Life the rare plentiful things are the people. I have spoken to witches by the score, real life shamans, gurus, healers, and amongst them the quiet “Masters” (men and women) that float around invisible to the naked eye! To replicate my daily Second Life chats in “real life” with folk thus condensed by trait from around the world would be either impossible or very expensive either in phone calls or aeroplane tickets. – You get the idea – I’ve met the distilled fraction of spectacular experts and nutters that I was looking for!

Meanwhile in real life one day in August 2010 I had sat on my bed in utter, utter despair. I slowly fell onto my side and felt my heart slow and wondered if I might just slip away. I decided to walk round the block just to pick up my heart beat. I was not ready to die.

When I got back indoors I realised that Second Life might be the platform to address my problems to try to cheer myself up a little. Life had to be better than this! I quit my Second life job which was working as a region administrator, threw away my clothes and teleported out completely naked into an unsuspecting Second Life spiritual community, with hope and some determination in my heart. I wanted to start again and cloth myself only in truth and joy.

So this has been my Quest.The Quest for Peace.

The Quest For Peace

It may quite possibly be your quest. Happiness is as you may have learned a fleeting thing; it occurs for a few moments and then seems to slip away as one returns to a sort of baseline emotion that one has established in life. Unfortunately this might be a baseline lower than you want. You may feel innately unhappy, unfulfilled, frustrated or stressed. Ask any go-getter entrepreneur what they’re really shooting for and the answer might well be “Peace” or “peace of mind” or “tranquillity” and that’s the reason they’re busting their buns working eight days a weeks to get all that money and financial security and creating a greater or lesser empire: their quest for Peace.

Some of humanity meanwhile is just living in a little world that doesn’t have a lot of Peace in it. Lives are as they wanted them – more or less –but all there seems to be are bad days and good days and too many bad days.

If only we could just enjoy ourselves a little more in what we do – can this be achieved? To have the exact same circumstances in one’s life and yet have more fun enjoyment and inner Peace – is this possible? The kids are the same, the house is the same, the “old fella” is the same, the life is the same -but with an added “I feel fab”. Is this do-able?

A lifetime of spirituality

I can offer are a logical approach pursuant to a lifetime’s worth spirituality. Some of you may be pleased to learn that I am not trained in the sphere of mental health, neither am I a medical doctor. Perhaps my biggest qualification in the arena of mental health is my years of slowly and dispiritingly worsening depression. Decades of it – like all joy was slowly slipping away.

The thing is, now I feel tons better! I wouldn’t say I am bouncing around in ecstatic joy – but I have found this “Inner Peace” that seems to be with me no-matter what happens.

During these years I have become more and more outside of normal humanity. It’s only to be expected with decades on a spiritual path. A have long since abandoned the material world, inasmuch as there is nothing I want. I don’t want a nicer house or newer car or better radio or even lots of money. Not really. Because I know that even with these things I have been or would be just the same; miserable! Years ago an amazingly depressed friend said to me “The only trouble with re-incarnation is that you come back as yourself!”  My point is; what is the logic in chasing stuff in the material world when beneath it all you know it will not make you happier and the current malaise is getting worse and worse? This was my experience and plight. And thus it was I found I had to focus on my mental health - my Spirituality.

I have tried, I really have. I’ve studied all sorts of religions, gone to all sorts of classes, read many, many books and most importantly applied what technologies belief systems and methodologies to myself and my life for thousands of hours. Alas my quest for peace failed in spectacular misery over many decades.

I tried to decide that my life wasn’t that bad. Looking at it from an exterior viewpoint I was well fed, gainfully employed and had a place to live. I recall the words of a friend’s father who survived the Second World War who maintained “Everything is okay so long as no one is trying to kill you!” But each spiritual process I was into seemed only to layer thoughts over the top of a deep seated melancholy and offer a day or two of cheerfulness.  My concern was that it was steadily all getting worse and worse. At one point I tried alcohol as my cares would definitely float away when intoxicated and would drink a bottle of wine regularly but after two years I just stopped –I was sick of the hangovers! The booze did help my mood generally somewhat, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it really is not an answer.

I lost my house and I had been basically homeless for six months bouncing around friends flats and houses and keeping the balance of all my worldly goods in a storage locker – Aren’t they expensive?  - Oh My God!!  The reason for this was the aforementioned journey down the toilet of mental health.  I couldn’t sleep, eat or most importantly work with any great effectiveness.

I could look at people weeping if I saw the news (I don’t often watch television) and wish I were them at least they had some sort of life that their loss could cause them such pain – I had no life and when my life turned difficult perhaps with a passing of a colleague or friend (it happens) I would actually rise slightly out of the misery – it was a spike in a flat line life.. I had succumbed to a joyless desperation. I was desperate for a way out of my mind. I wanted to smile again.

I cannot emphasise strongly enough this spiritual dedication that has been my life. I have sort of become more than I was; I really can turn my hand to anything from shaman journeying to healing. I’ve talked my way into few altered states where all of my world changed totally and have regarded serendipity and miracles as normal and to be expected. It’s nothing to me to be drawn to a shop and find an item I have been looking. It’s difficult to communicate thousands of hours of spiritual practise; but that’s what it was.

I knew I was some sort of immortal being. I can remember past lives and then some: even the dawn of Creation before this Universe.  I knew I had a link to everything –there was nothing I could not feel from near and remote people and places to a tree or animal that I encountered. People had remarked how they could feel my spirituality and my power but one dear, dear, friend a man of phenomenal vision noted amongst a barrage of praise that “I can feel the dark in you”. When I studied Reiki, my teacher commented that he thought I was immediately better at it than he was and shortly after I cured him of something and it has changed his life: this came as no surprise to me as I knew beneath all the crap in my head there was something extraordinary, something wonderful deep in the essence of what I am, and that thing I felt was Love. I also knew that I was different and I still feel different which concerns me as I am so outside of humanity that I wonder if I communicate well at all.

When you read this please try to remember who I am. I am not a regular person with regular priorities. I care not for money and things. I do not want anything much, in fact the less things I have the happier I am. I do not need the company of others and can be alone without speaking to a soul for days and it makes no difference to my mood. The physical world has just caused me pain and it is only a deep love for others that keeps me here. I feel I have a job to do and to some extent the job is first and my life and well being is second. I am here for you, not myself – I will be fine.

Meanwhile something had to be done or my task here would go undone.  Body death by misery seemed near.

So one day in January 2011 I decided to find my own truth by starting from the beginning.

Starting from the beginning.

Who am I and why am I here and why are we here?

What do I know?

Some people think we are reincarnating spirits. “Spiritual beings having a human experience” and all that. Some people think we are bodies in a big universe and can thank some lucky amino acids in a primordial soup a few million years ago for our existence. You live- you die –and that’s that.

Some people accept Jesus as their Lord and Savoir, when others chant the Hari Krsna mantra and still others don’t believe “any of that Buddhism bollocks” as per a man I met one afternoon in a London café!

So everyone has their own truth, you got people praying on one side of the street and others laughing at them on the other.

So what is The Truth?

So I started from the beginning. What is my truth? Everyone else can believe what they want to believe – this is apparent – but can I not have a logical investigation into it all?

What do I know?

A better start is what do I perceive –what’s going on? Well … I perceive a reality. I see houses and cars and trees and people and I see my own body. This reality may or may not be real – it may be some sort of illusion like in The Matrix or Inception films. Or reality might be the Buddhist “illusion”. Or it might be all a dream like Rene Descartes said – if dreams seem real and yet are not; maybe all of life is a dream? Or it could be the “brain in the jar” philosophy idea or that we are in a computer program from the future somehow and perhaps forgetting where we really are is built into it – all one has to do is take off the “Virtual World Helmet” and bang – that’s who we are – someone in the year 2113 not 2013.!!

Soooo...I perceive a reality that seems real.

What else? Oh yes! My mind, there’s that. It’s there with a whole symphony of thoughts and ideas about myself – none of which are particularly uplifting!

And emotions  - I perceive those or rather they seem around me –mostly as I have said as a sad and pitiful type that seems to blight what otherwise might be a pretty day.

And I have memories of ‘linear time’ or a timeline of my recordings. Whether time exists or not I cannot guarantee but I perceive it and live it. I should point out that there is no proof of linear time as all the proof of it exists in this moment.

That’s the next thing –there is only this moment  ‘Now’  I cannot see the past or future directly with the five senses but I do have some vision from memory (the past) and spooky perceptions (the future).

For myself I feel a little spread over time and unsure of the realness of The Reality.

Anything else?  Yes I am often surprised by the world and feel like I didn’t make it but then at other times I feel the whole world is my creation! This happens when I find my beliefs and belief systems seem to manifest in the world and it is perhaps the mere belief that I feel reality is a surprise that alone creates its surprises –who knows? The Law of Attraction has been documented for over 100 years in the West and probably thousands of years elsewhere – it’s probably the first thing us spiritual types noticed about the world – it follows what you think! Having said that I feel my life somehow is ‘not in my hands’ and I feel either guided or fated.

I have always felt I am not my body and have deduced that I am a spiritual being. This has been supported with memories of past existences from many, many hours of self-regression. I seem to pre-date this universe and then some. There’s other weird stuff here too where I can ‘remember’ the start of the Creation before time existed –but that’s either the truth or just plain nuttiness on my part. I am different, I am not normal and I feel blessed for it! The key here is what or who am I? I always have felt some innate immortality in myself regardless of the body ageing and body death looming ahead. A spiritual being? Yes but what’s that? I am familiar with my thought processes but I have messed around with the phenomenon of the power of beliefs for so many years that I wonder if I am simply creating myself out of some sort of “sea of universal awareness”. Am I creating “me” as whatever I think “me” is –namely a reincarnating spiritual being?

There are lots of questions and for answers there are hundreds of thousands to be found in philosophies, religions, books and websites. My only option is to look for myself and find my own truth.

So I have a perception of an apparent reality including my body, some thoughts and some emotions. I have the outer world and inner world to look at and I have questions, lots of questions about the details!

That’s where I am. What’s your starting point?

So I started the investigation to look at all this and work out my own truth on who I am and what reality is. I sat in a chair, posed myself some questions and what follows is really my report.

Then a funny thing happened

I found I see what appears to be a reality and linear time ticking away. I looked at the world I perceived with the five senses and the spooky metaphysical senses I think I have and as you can imagine, I just wondered if any of it all were real!

Stage two of my enquiry might be to attempt to answer “Who am I?”

So I decided the next thing to do was to look inward and find out who this “me” is.

So off I went again and had the millionth look into my mind.  I am starting at the beginning so what do I see in there? I see thoughts. I see ideas or beliefs about myself. I see ideas about the world such as “I am in the world” and “though I feel a connection with everything in the world somehow everything thing in the world is separate from me”. You may notice the way this last sentence is written: you might have expected to read “I see things are separate from me, yet I feel a connection” but here you can perhaps see the depth of my spiritual life- I feel connected to everything-this is my perception.

In the mind also are memories that play out as images or videos if I choose and along with them emotions. There are desires and perhaps my driving desire which is the pursuit of happiness and pleasure and the avoidance of pain and mental suffering.  Yeah, there’s loads of stuff in the mind and all of it really boils down to thoughts of various types and emotions. Thoughts and emotions.

I see what I call “my mind” with its thoughts and emotions .Now what?

Well clearly I don’t see myself as these things. They are not me though they do try to define me. I can change or create a belief or a desire and experience emotions but neither of them seem to be “me” – they are thought-things and emotion-things. The emotions seem to sort of colour the air or blanket me and the thoughts arrive more like… needles. But blankets and needles are not “me”!

So if I am not my thoughts or emotion – who am I? And I sat there looking at all the thoughts and assigning them the label “only a thought and not me”. Suddenly I wasn’t a spiritual being or a reincarnator or a person or depressed or kind to people or even 5 feet 8inches in height. Suddenly these things that I might call “True” were just “Only a thought”.

I am looking for “me” –where am I?  Everything the rational deductive mind threw at me about anything got sort of thrown in the trash. All thoughts no matter how compelling or seductive seemed to be just a label I place on objects I perceive or concerning events in my life. “Coffee is good” and “I need to do something with my life” and even “how can I find the truth when all of history has failed to find it?” all got thrown in the trash.

 Was that a thought? Yes! Trash! Ha-ha Who am I? What is me? Where am I?

But when I looked for myself something really weird happened!!

 I couldn’t find myself!

 I looked at my body –that’s not me. And I looked at my mind – the thoughts don’t seem to be me either. The thoughts and beliefs I have attempt to define me such as “I am miserable “and “I will never amount to anything” and even “I am nice to people” but they are not me.

And the emotions I have; mostly despair and grief and pain though peppered  with some cheerfulness and joy ,these seems to surround me like the air surrounds my body or water, a fish – but these are not me either!

So if I am not my body, or my thoughts and beliefs and the resultant emotions – what am I?

Now we are getting somewhere – how interesting is this?

I looked and I looked but I was nowhere to be seen! All I had was perceptions. I can see thoughts flying around and I can see my body walking around and I can feel some pretty horrible emotions as I said but “I “was nowhere to be seen! There just wasn’t a “me” there!

I can triangulate my position –I seem to be viewing the world from a spot inside my head but that’s just the centre of my perception – I can’t see anything  there ? There’s no “me” where I am supposed to be!

One might expect to see oneself somewhere but you can look for yourself - where are you?

How weird is that?!

Watching thoughts

I did not get too far before more and more thoughts came along so I just started watching them.

I suppose at this point I started to realise what I am not.

 What a relief! I am not all those horrible thoughts and the wasted life (in my estimation) were just thoughts and not me! They are about as “me” as the thought “My hovercraft is full of eels”...ha ha. As I said -they may try to define me but they clearly are not me. All those horrible thoughts started to move away like suddenly I was standing on the mental bridge over the mental motorway(freeway) and watching all the cars-the thoughts, zooming by underneath.

Am I finding some measure of Peace? –I certainly seem to feel a great weight taken off my shoulders. Goodness – I really am not those thoughts! I seem to separate out a little from the miserable mind that I been looking at. Phew! That’s Nice!

So whatever I am I can watch thoughts and much more to the point I began to be able to let them go. “I will never be happy” -haha it’s just another bus travelling along the motorway –why do I need to jump onto it and get all miserable again? I can just watch it go by and wait for the next one. Here it comes it’s…..”Oh –I am not really thinking about anything”. He-he.

Watching emotions

The next thing was to watch were the emotions. I suppose I imagine them as different colours of air that might surround me and I made the analogy if fish being in the water and not being the water.  The emotions may range from a thick-black- fog depression to a bright-sky-blue happiness, but all emotions do not seem to be me.

Separating myself out from emotions seemed more difficult for me. The thoughts were constantly looming and lurking ready to upset my new found equanimity but they were easier to assign as “not-me”. The emotions however were very good at driving me back to where I was - namely –despair. Despair itself is just an emotion which is obvious, but quite a blanketing thing when it surrounded me.There is an intellectual understanding and there is practical application. Over the months that followed the thoughts and emotions moved further and further away from “me” –whatever that is!

Were I to define the mind as – the thoughts, beliefs and emotions- then my mind was eager to move in and define me. My mind perhaps almost wanted to convince me that I was something that I was not!

Wow – at this point I found even more Peace –even though I didn’t know who I was yet!!!

Introduction to my methodology

If you are struggling with this it’s because you are seeking an intellectual understanding. The whole methodology here is that I am moving out of the mind and away from deductive reasoning itself. I am just looking. It’s perception. You perhaps see a child – any thoughts or emotions arising are something extra to look at. If you deduce that my “method is flawed” or that “all this has been written before” or that you “disagree strongly” – my question is and always is:

Is that a thought?

It is isn’t it?

In which case have you also found that these convincing and very seductive arguments are themselves only thoughts and as such are not you?

We are just looking. We are not thinking about it! What do you perceive? I see my thoughts but they are not me.

So I can see what I am not, but what remains is this neutral observer that has no thoughts. There the cold scientific approach ends because the scope and joy and Peace that seem to dwell in this …thing…at my core is very, very nice indeed. This was and is my experience. And still when I look for this “thing” or “the me” or “Real Me” I cannot see it! I am still nowhere to be found and all I have are perceptions of the outside world and mental inside world.

Find you own truth

I feel it’s important at this time to encourage you not to simply follow along with what I say without doing your own investigation.

I am not starting a new belief system here. This is not a new religion. To be honest I really don’t mind what others believe and neither should you – for every belief system there is, anyone can find a thousand people who think the opposite. There is only your truth because the number of truths out there is as many as there are people – over seven billion at the last count!

I have my truth –what’s yours?  I did not and still do not feel there is “The Truth” a Universal-Way-It-Is-Truth. Arrogance is Bliss!

What’s your truth?

The Method thus far!

To recap; I’ve established what I am not. I am not the reality I see. I am not my body. I am not the thoughts. I am not the emotions.

But who am I?  No idea for the moment – let’s have another look shall we!

I am discounting all thought as mere thought and not the “me” or Real Me. Furthermore I have discovered that the summation of thoughts in the mind want to define me. At this point I was regarding the mind as sort of an enemy –something that was putting me down – like a whispering demon on my shoulder. Although this hardly is positive thinking I was careful not to apply the failed techniques of other studies to my fresh start and thus just let the process play out.

Labelling any thought no matter how clever or seductive or logical as “just a thought” took a bit of practise. I would find myself travelling along “what-if” and “what this means” and “how does this work” until I realised abruptly that these computations are simply thoughts and not to be taken seriously. This step was focused on finding a “me”, the Real Me that isn’t thoughts or emotions.

This was new territory for the mind because I wasn’t using it! –I was and am simply looking. So I would stare into the world that I perceived and look inward and outward looking for myself. Thoughts would come and I would greet them as one would regard a vehicle passing on the road. I found at first that all could see were thoughts so I would just watch them in the hope that I they might stop their distraction and I could look for the Real Me.

I watched the “thought highway” with neutrality. New cars, old cars, small cars, big trucks; all types of thoughts got the same treatment – I just observed them. Happy thoughts, sad thoughts, trivial thoughts and meaningful thoughts all were watched and let pass as much as my old habit of chasing thoughts along would allow. Thoughts often spawned more related thoughts; one could imagine maybe a chain of red cars or line of large white vans appearing in a line on the motorway. You will notice a lot of classic therapy is avoided in this method. Normally when confronted by “The Blues” I would layer better thoughts on top of the bad ones. “This too shall pass” ” is a good example and books have been written about it: books that may have helped you - but didn’t help me!

My method here seems to sooth old trauma and negative concepts about myself – I was just watching all thoughts as the neutral observer that seems to be at the core of myself.

The method is to sit with a thought and greet and welcome it. In the fullness of time I stopped relabelling a thought as destructive or beneficial; old cars or nice shiny new cars. Traffic is just traffic – all thoughts are just thoughts

Something Wonderful

I had plenty of thoughts about this as I have said!

“I am immortal”. “I a spiritual being” “I am a reincarnating spiritual being” “I am not a body” and so forth. But I am starting at the very beginning.

In the “mind” as I define it with thoughts beliefs and emotions I have had to add memories. Memories are also not me though they too try to define me in some way, especially past failures, regrets and so forth. I might add there were no regrets – I have long since regarded regret as a betrayal of self. If a friend were to harbour regrets one would point out that it’s destructive as the past is gone and there is little they can do about it.

I just kept looking. Perceiving.

Meanwhile lots of interesting things started happening – none of which helped to find out who I was.  Firstly I looked at the world with new eyes. A world with no labels. Trees were no longer “trees” neither were they “green” or had “brown bark”. I just stared blankly at them. Objects were neither “here and nearby” or “over there and distant”. The reality I saw started to become flat like a video being played on my eyeballs! Everything seemed to be me – I couldn’t tell where I stopped and the perception began. This was and is my experience!

And the other thing was regarding linear time. It seemed to stop also. There was no yesterday or even three seconds ago –everything was happening now in this moment. The past was just another thought, another thing that I was watching. I stopped labelling memories in linear time and now all memories were just videos, but occurring now in this moment. The past had become like a big thought or thought collection that could only be looked at in this very moment and to that extent the past did not exist it was just an idea in The Now.

Both these things combined to manufacture a bombardment of new thoughts and new questions – all of which I would sit with and watch-with increasing bewilderment! If one “isn’t allowed” to reason things through and just simply looks – it does get quite baffling; baffling to the mind anyway.

The more I just sat a looked the more I understood, the more I thought about it the less sense it made. There were clearly two types of understanding here the new one that occurs when thinking stops and the old one that engages the rational mind to figure things out.

The mind seemed desperate to step in and pigeon hole or analyse or sort my perception and understanding and translate it into thought. I must say what I perceive thus does not translate into words very well. But it rapidly became apparent I was seeing something concerning the “real me” that I had not considered.

Everything I perceive is a part of me. I can find no “me “there, except as everything I see, hear, smell, taste or touch. Even my spooky psychic sense perceptions that have evolved over the years all seem part of “me”.

All perceived “things” are part of “me”.

But I neglect to mention –It was wonderful! Just wonderful!

I sat in a chair and stared at the world with a peace I had never felt. No labels. The mind had stopped playing its game with me and I felt calm. I would love to report that the room sparkled and everything shone in the sunlight but it didn’t. But I was finally at Peace. Peace. Blessed Peace.

As time goes on I do now have moments just staring at my hand or watching the shower spray silver darts of water – I never had a massive epiphany –it all is just getting easier and easier. I am emerging from a mind full of utter despair and slowly, slowly, slowly it is going away.

You will note that having separated from thoughts beliefs and emotions, I thus re-joined with them! Though they don’t define me – they are I discovered part of me; everything is!

Meanwhile my mind jumps up with a whole load of deductions and hypotheses. “Are you The God?” “If you are Everything, are you making everything –are you creating the whole world? And if so how, why and why can’t you levitate?”

The mind wanted to know “How” and “Why”.

I can provide no answer –because my non-thinking understanding and perception of the whole thing doesn’t seem to want to be written! The concept is hard to put into words. But I will try.

All this time I was looking for Peace and I had it all along. I am Peace.

Is this Enlightenment?

Having explained to the mind that “I am Everything” and that “all is okay and don’t worry about it” I started to rewrite the mind or perhaps make a new one. This I wonder is the first steps to “Enlightenment”. It’s not the being or person that gets enlightened – everyone already is the “Real Me” and is already very cool and groovy – but it’s the mind they have that gets “Self-realised ”; the mind realises the Self (Real Me). It’s just a matter of education. An education by simply looking for oneself!!!

Well I didn’t have a cataclysmic rush of realisation. And I haven’t woken up “deep in the void”. And I wouldn’t call myself Enlightened but I am definitely enlightened (with a small e). So life plods along in a lighter and more peaceful way. I still talk about me and my problems but only these days as a convention in modern society. “I” go to the shops and “I” still have back pain and “I” sometimes still cry but deep down I know these things do not define “Me”. They are part of a very big me but they do not define me. “I feel sad” just doesn’t seem to have any weight to it anymore!

Slowly the mind is getting accustomed to the idea of the Real Me being  Everything. It’s a hard nut for it to chew!

All the rational thought processes currently can make little sense of it. There is no understanding that I can find in the mind. All I ask my thought processes to do is accept this “new” state of affairs!

Desires, The Buddha and “Arrogance is Bliss”

According to plenty of people “desire is the root of suffering”. I don’t care if the Buddha did say this –Arrogance is Bliss - I am looking for my truth not his. I am doing my own investigation from the beginning. All other people’s ideas or truth do not concern me and I would encourage you, as I have said, to do your own investigation and not simply read this as another doctrine and belief system to be carefully considered (thought about!).

Bottom line; I don’t care what you think or what your thoughts are and neither do I care what my thoughts are either! This should be apparent. Thoughts I hope I have discovered and shown are not me, they seem part of me but they do not define the Real Me.

Hence “Arrogance is Bliss” – I am finding my truth for me and you or anyone else does not have my truth! The title and as a catch phrase it is kind of a joke. Well I think it is funny!

But there is something not quite right about throwing all thoughts into the trash –have you felt it? It is something to do with intuition and just knowing –more on this later.

Back to the task:-

Well, obviously a desire or resistance is a type of thought. Resistance is a desire to not-have something but all those philosophical or religious arguments regarding suffering can be brushed aside for the moment – I am looking for the Real Me. A desire is a thought and a thought is not the Real Me.

So again another weight lifts off. All my desires and sufferings for that matter are what? Mere thought! They seek to define me perhaps in the mind but they are clearly separate from the Real me.  Perhaps desire is the root of suffering but meanwhile where is the Real Me?

All the worries also, are just thoughts something else to discard as not me!

I am looking for peace and it seems I am Peace. There is nothing to touch me as all the thoughts, beliefs, memories, desires and worries are not me. How cool is that? But I still haven’t worked out who or what the real me is yet! But I am beginning to see what I am not.

In fact the only thing that I feel I am is all my perceptions. There still is no “me” there that I can see. I cannot say I am “the things perceived” because … because that’s not what it looks like! Try it for yourself!

Getting into “The Now”-“This””

I suppose what am doing is getting into this moment –“The Now”. “Now” implies time perhaps. I might call it “This”, this moment. This. But then “This” or even “Here” maybe implies something close to me? Whatever –it is what it is! You can see how even calling something “this moment” is just a label and as such it is an unwanted label. Perhaps all words are labels – I don’t want to go down this intellectual road – but I do find it a challenge to explain what I am perceiving.

I think “The Now” has moved somewhat into common usage by us spiritual types –so I will continue employing it.

Discussing this with a friend I decided I liked “Meditation” to use out of its normal definition perhaps to call The Now or This and Everything and the Real Me. Expressions such as “Return to The Now” seem to be more accurate stated as “Return to Meditation”. I am still looking for a better word for “being there”! Sometimes I might say “Go There!” or “Be There” or”look only at this moment” but none of the “The Now” type expressions really cover it because they‘re just a signpost to “It”, the “Real Me”.

Someone said to me the other day to consider that “The Now” doesn’t exist by which I think she meant it’s reference to present time is not so accurate.

Everything exists in The Now or This. The mind should get the idea that everything is Here from all of linear time past, future and now. Time exists in the mind as memory and as an idea. The Buddha still sits under the Bodhi tree on the cusp of Enlightenment!

 It’s the difficulty with language that we encounter with the description; even using the present tense implies past and future and linear time. “I am going to the shops” implies quite clearly that I have not got to the shops yet; when I am the shops and to that extent am already there!

Let me try and “send you” into The Now, The This as follows:-

The Real Me is a field of Infinite Potentiality or Possibility (after some Quantum Physics authors). I am the region where magical potential gives rise to a variety of forms (Eckhart Tolle uses “forms”): forms such as shoes, people and stars! So to describe things as my “creation” is okay except that maybe this implies I create things outside of myself when all is within. I don’t create sandcastles - I am the sand the sandcastle is made of. I am the stuff the sand is made of. I am the stuff the small girl who made the sandcastle is made of. I am the stuff of which the small girl’s spiritual essence is made. “I am That” is a commonly used here. So I am everything in the world, all the bits and pieces and all the ideas and perceptions of everyone and anything; but also I am still one thing. Clearly to understand this Infinity Possibility that yet can have many Infinite things within it, have opposites together and two things in the same place and time and after smiling at the rejection by the logic of the mind, one has to “go there”.

I wrote repeatedly in 2012 “Spirituality is the Law and that’s the only Law there is”. But a year later I looked for the author of the Law and found it was Me!

Going there –the method thus far

 I feel I should re look at the method to see how it has evolved. One key element to the method is to keep doing it! It went in circles or spirals towards more and more clarity of seeing the Real Me. A lot can be realised in the first few minutes but keep I kept going with some determination.

One is looking at thoughts at first. Greeting them and watching them. If one jumps on a thought , like catching a bus then that happens but return gently to watching the new  train of thought as soon as possible from this position as an observer. One is standing on the motorway bridge watching the vehicles (thoughts) go by!

Occasionally a sneaky thought arises concerning this method or process and the meaning of it all. Meaning is just a thought and it can be funny to watch the mind play out in this fashion. Watch the meanings.

Recognise other thoughts as they arise; the memories, desires and beliefs. But don’t label them or name them as such.

Recognise stress and worries.

Recognise emotions.

Recognise labels attached to objects seen. It’s not a “blue cup”, a “green lawn” or “a sad occasion” – things and thoughts are just as they are with no labels.

Sounds are not the “song of a blackbird” or a “car horn” or a “lawnmower somewhere” – remove all the labels. In Advaita (non-duality) I have heard them say “There is no sound of the bell –just the ringing”.

Neither are things or sounds distant nor near.

If a label comes from the mind regarding anything then don’t beat yourself up because you’re doing it wrong – Just look at the label!!!

See the labels. Look at the names the mind puts on things – all things.

Then simply see things just as they are.

If you want a thought try this:

It is as it is.

If I ask “What do I see?” the answer comes as a thought. But to look and not to want or expect a thought or translation from the rational reasoning mind is what I am going for.

What do I see? Don’t answer –just look!

Just look!

Because “I” can only really see perception and still haven’t found “Me” yet, I might more accurately ask:

What is perceived?

The method then starts by looking at things mental and physical and metaphysical (if you do that sort of thing) and work out what is not you. 

We are looking at a world without the names or labels, the thoughts assigned to them and we are watching thoughts and emotions.

Ask "Who am I?" or "What am I?" 

The second stage is to see if there is an “Understanding” that surpasses the conventional understanding of the reasoning mind i.e. Consider what you Understand when you do not think –but don’t think about it!

I am Everything!

If you recall when I looked for “me”, I was nowhere to be seen. The only me I can see is a bunch of explanations and definitions of myself that are thoughts in the mind. Once I discounted these ideas, these thoughts as mere thoughts that seem to be just things and not me then nothing remained –I just was not there! All that remained was the perception itself and things perceived whether they be the physical world or mental. I felt this to be the video of life playing out in a field of perception.  I am my life.

But as I continued there became more to it – what or who I am seems vast and includes everyone I meet and all the things there and more besides. I feel this oneness with the whole world even those parts of it that I cannot perceive with the traditional senses – like for example a beach in a foreign country and all the people in the world.

I am Everything. It was and still is a bit of a shock to the reasoning mind I can tell you. A gazillion questions, hypotheses and possible explanations pop up in the mind. But all these thoughts can just be met too.

The more I talk about it the less clear it is! One is not being a “Witness” or “The Observer” or “The Watcher” because that is a dual concept –the thing and the observer. I experience a non-duality; I am all these things observed.

I can find no “Me” – all I can find that feels like me is everything perceived including all physical, all mental and I suppose all metaphysical stuffs too.

There is only perception. But even to say that is complicating matters! Try it for yourself!

Life is.

It is.

“I am Everything” is wrong –it is not the way it is. It’s because this is a thought and what I experience is something that has no thoughts associated with it. I almost want to say “Everything is me” but that isn’t quite right either!

Did I make a mistake? Am I deluding myself?-More about the method.

Possibly.  But the above is just a thought so my Truth stated here is arrogant, from Arrogance is Bliss.

It could be that I am a body with a thinking brain and that the brain itself is an empty vessel that has thoughts generated in it and as such doesn’t have any character itself. Like an empty cup that takes on meaning by the type of drink it is filled with (“Have an orange juice” etc.). This would explain why if I negate all thoughts “I” cannot be seen. 

But if I am just a brain I wouldn’t expect to suddenly feel like I am all my perceptions. I would still expect things to be definitely outside of me and “over there” all the time. Maybe.  Contrast this with my feeling that all things perceived are actually part of me. I do not feel this brain idea to be true and that is the only support for my ideas thus far that I have.

If I am a brain only, then other possibilities are just as possible: the 2113 computer program simulation (mentioned earlier) tricking me, or the philosopher’s “brain in a jar” or The Matrix film type scenarios. This is the way it feels to me; to be just a brain seems as unlikely as other tricks that might be being played my perception. Who knows –maybe it is God messing with my head –whatever.

More about the method

I referred earlier to the persistence required to continue the method.  I should mention there were times when I thought I was inventing the whole thing or I my mind was filled with a problem with it all. I felt many times that I had reached an impasse where some very strong concept would not go away. It is only by asking myself “Is this a thought and not me? Or just “Is this a thought?” that these things would separate out. Some thoughts are true and somehow reflect the world accurately but I had to not trouble myself with these things and determinedly look for a Core Me or Real Me. The deepest, darkest, method-crashing thoughts were not me –they are just thoughts. Often the mind and habit might generate counter arguments to these strong thoughts. I might tell myself that I have seen I am the blankness where these thoughts dwell and so forth –but this is just the mind streaming more thoughts after the first one! In earlier blogs I had discussed “mind wars” where one part of the mind argues or debates with another. This is to be avoided as it generates unnecessary angst! Push on and doggedly watch all thoughts with the neutrality.

 I have seen processes and methods by other authors and groups that dive into thoughts and the whole concept. I wasn’t really doing this because that method sort of takes the meaning and significance more seriously than my approach.

The focus is not to sort out past trauma or resolve issues and disperse nasty thoughts. My focus was to stop thinking and just look. If a thought arose then I would look at it and return to look at everything else in the world in my field of perception. I had seen a glimpse of the Real Me and deep down I had become to know that I am Peace and that all traumas or issues or problems or stress or worry or anything else were as clouds in the sky to an untroubled Sun.  So to belabour the point why mess around with deep meanings in concepts unless it serves to continue looking at the Real Me? This actually relates to an old trick for past trauma resolution which is to change ones viewpoint. If we regard our whole life as not ours and really someone else’s then magically we can scroll through some even horrifically emotionally charged events with the neutrality of a cold observer –a viewpoint shift.  Bad times can take on a comedy aspect with this. Clearly the viewpoint “I am Everything” is a viewpoint shift for the mind and thus it is that the old deep issues melt away more speedily here. In the mind I could easily re-label identity and life as “The Paloma Unit” or “The beloved Paloma” or “The Paloma Lifestream” but all this is up to you and is only re-educating the mind a mind that is within the Big Me but does not define Me.

Sometimes mantras might form in my mind to help me not live through a thought but just observe it. I might say to myself “Imagine the Sun looking at the little clouds on Earth –these are my little thoughts” – but clearly this is a thought construct itself –just stop thinking the construct once the problem thought or dominant thoughts have passed.

I am looking for the Real Me and just looking at what I see. Meanwhile the mind becomes more and more comfortable with the idea of a Real Me that it cannot define and learns not to worry about it!

A note on “stop thinking”. I have found people can do this very easily. They only need to do it for about 5 seconds before they say “Woooooow”. That’s all that is required; a few seconds. This will give you a nice look at the Real You. Thereafter perhaps when you are all Enlightened and on your third world tour you may hardly think at all – but for now just stop thinking for a few seconds! To recap my method to stop thinking is to look at what I see without putting any mental labels on things:  needs fixing, needs cleaning, a chair, a spiritual being, God, his spoon, green, over there, here near me etc. Do this for all perception: sight, sound, touch, smell, taste and metaphysical.

Some courage is required. I decided I was a spiritual being thirty years ago and to remove that label was a challenge. But I still am – but that doesn’t define me! Let me explain the duality perhaps. There is one thing and within that one thing there is life with all its bits and pieces: so all of Life is real but yet an illusion: tables and chairs and spiritual beings. But it goes deeper because if you see no spiritual beings you are correct –we are both correct! Have a look for yourself and do not trouble yourself to bounce thoughts and ideas around in your mind the whole concept sits outside the mind –kind of.

You have tried looking at the mind and deductive reasoning and so have a lot of other people –try looking outside of the world of thought –it’s enlightening!

Reincarnation, Spirituality and “The Illusion”

I’ve heard some folk who claim to be Enlightened and have “dissolved their personality” (their minds) have stated that reincarnation doesn’t exist.

This is not my experience. Everything seems to exist. Linear time may be a sort of illusion as everything seems to be “Now only”; but my slippers are still where I left them! Linear time plays out in the same way all of reality is real- it’s all sort of real. So my memories of reincarnations are a valid now as they ever were – it’s just that all of reality has the question mark hanging over it now!

My perception includes handbags, flowers, cats and dogs and spiritual beings! I feel people in a metaphysical way just as before – but they just seem part of me now. Non –duality.  Oneness. Everything feels connected together as part of the same thing and made of the same stuff –Me!!!

Also I have heard this “When you die your mind dissolves and you return to the One”. This seems to me as just a thought! It’s an idea. It may be true -it may not. I think it depends on the individual.

Does my mind dissolve when my body dies or does it not? My best answer is:

Why not?!

Why not?! . Nothing seems fixed to me. Why is this like this and not like that or can this or that happen?

Why not?!

I heard the expression “Block Universe” - I didn’t research it but for me it expresses “Everything in the Universe is just one thing –a Block” My experience is that all things are possible. More than that I would state:-

Everything is happening now. All the Past, all the Future, all the possible Pasts, Futures and Presents.

There is only this moment but within it is Everything. It’s just a Block –it’s here now. Everything is here.      –this is my experience.

Don’t think about it – or you will do what I have done for decades, which is to ponder (think) on someone else’s truth!  I beg you, with a cherry on the top –have a look for yourself!

Streamlining

To recap.

I looked and could find no “me”. I see the world and thoughts as they come into view. Thoughts are in many flavours (!) positive, negative, memories, beliefs about myself and others and desires like ambition and so forth. There are judgements and the labels the mind (formerly me) put on events and objects. Even to label a thought as “just a thought” or “thought” is another thought! I am calling all the labels we put on things “thoughts” also.

Separating out from thought then is not really difficult but I found it was more like breaking an old habit. I am just looking –and notice “just looking” is a label; so I just “………” hehe.

As I moved away from thought, I say again -there was no “me” to be seen. There is just the looking, the hearing, the touching, the smelling, the tasting.

“The Me” seemed to start with and be the perception only!

So there was no me so I could not ask “What do I see?” and could not recommend to you that you just look because you may not find a “you” there either!

There is just perception…but again “perception” is a word and thought (eeek), and “just look” is a thought also! So I might carefully ask of you:-

Do what I mean by “just Look”!

Do what I mean by “just Look”. …but without the “doing”! I wasn’t really doing or being anything either when I look.

“There is perceiving” – maybe that says it? Well sort of! It’s perception without the label “perception” which I hope and pray you will discover for yourself (!) is totally different. One of those less is more things.

Did I mention doing this for yourself? Please do this for yourself with yourself, by yourself, for yourself and that’s not reading this here but doing it…yourself. Okay?  Find your own Truth. Can you find a “you” there? Or can you only find as I did, the perception?

Death, stress and trauma

I recently got very stressed about an unpaid bill. This was in “real life” and not Paloma Porta in Second Life. I had forgotten about it and now it had gone all horribly wrong. Phone calls had to be made; ruffled feathers had to be smoothed, late charges met and the bank direct debit redone and so forth. Nightmare! I wasn’t feeling very “Arrogance is Bliss” or very Zen at all. My heart was pounding and I thought this isn’t good for my health and maybe if only I exercised more I would be better able physically to deal with this and I hope it all doesn’t contribute to another body problem or illness. You get the idea; the mind was going bananas with it all! At the time the person the mind wants me to be was being lived fully but looking back at it all I can see the mechanisms in play. I was living in thought – simple as that.

It strikes me that the separation from the mind is a healthy thing –for me anyway as all the mind can offer or has offered is a bunch of unhelpful negative! To step outside trauma or stress and to move away from it all thus is a blessed relief – a measure of Peace.

 “Meditate on death” as many an Enlightened guru has said. When I just look at the world as I have done with blank neutrality or whatever it is I “do without doing” when I “just look” without the mental labels I get an answer to “meditate on death”. I feel the urge to report back to you in the most Zen fashion: “I am already dead!” but to meditate on death in my mind is a bit scary –“ohhhh I don’t want to die” and all that. But this is what the mind would say. 

The thoughts constantly create this illusory “me” that quite naturally does not want to die.

Clearly whether the mind is scared or happy about death or anything else does not matter.

Who is it that is not enlightened? It is only the mental processes that maintain this non-enlightened- shall I say “error” of the me. If I ever feel the emotion of fear accompanying the thought of death you can imagine the reaction by the Real me – no reaction, just the looking!!!

In Advaita, non-duality - I have attended lectures in Second Life where there is the quote:

      “The sun is always shining [no matter how cloudy the sky beneath]”.

 By which they mean no matter what dark dismal thoughts are clouding the Real Me from shining forth, the Real Me is there always. That someone is unaware of their true self is of no importance perhaps. If good and bad are just human thought-labels then people are people and Life is Life. It is what it is. The sun is always shining; the Real Me is always there regardless.

Having said that something does not quite feel quite right with the idea of there being no good or bad and that is to do with my feeling that Life is an Idea –a progression, an evolution - but more on that later. 

You will note that as the Real Me emerges there is an Understanding there. They sit as ideas that are not thoughts which all is a bit hard to explain.

 Try this: look at something white and something black that are together so you can see both at the same time - or things of markedly different colour. Consider the difference without thinking any thought such as ”It’s a cigarette lighter” or “It’s white”. That’s what I am talking about – spooky isn’t it?!

What I am not!

I have established that I am not my thoughts and not my body –established it to my satisfaction anyway.  As I have said I don’t care what you think. It’s harsh but does protect me from the belief systems and doctrines of others and is pursuant to the book title “Arrogance is Bliss”.

It also becomes apparent that I am not the person I thought I was!

The person I thought I was is merely a summation of thought. This was my experience. To change my ideas i.e. thoughts about myself has changed me and quite dramatically over the years. Indeed the 19 year old me, was not me! So “I” seem to be the blank slate or empty page all these ideas are written on: which means the ideas written there or thoughts and beliefs in the mind are just a changeable notion and sort of a big lie about who I really am.

As an aside for therapy and lifting oneself out of the blues, unhappiness, stress or trauma I might say to you that my mind is so full of so much endless, endless stuff (crap) that scrutinising every single thing was not an option especially as plenty more stuff seemed to pop up daily. Better I feel is to redo the mind from the start. I just look at thoughts, sit with them, meet them or just let them play out. If I get involved with a thought stream like the above high stress event then at least I can discount it all later – worry free.

 “I am losing my mind Dave – I can feel it” Hal 9000(the computer) from 2010 movie –hehe.

Having a different type of mind is enlightenment –in my humble opinion. I have said earlier everyone, the “Real You” and “Real Me” already is enlightened and it’s only the self-realised mind that qualifies them with the “Enlightened” appellation. I already am Peace-there is nothing to attain with that-but to let it shine maybe the mind needs to back off a little!!!

To find out what I am by the subtraction of what I am not and see what’s left, sort of works; because I feel when thoughts stop that I am this peculiar combination of perception and things perceived as I have described. I feel when thinking stops that I am everything –which is very weird. There is still no “Me” that I can point a stick at. All of life is like something that is me and that to look at it is to look at myself, the undefined. 

When I think about this I conclude that I must also be every other person that I have met – everyone in the video I perceive of life. This also is my experience with just looking: Occasionally in the past I have felt that everyone is like a scripted actor saying there lines and following my expectation of them. This type of link with people has been noticed by many folk in the spirituality business where to mentally change ones view of a person towards perhaps a reconciliation manifests as that person changing their manner or attitude towards also. Indeed it is not uncommon to make peace with someone in one’s own mind and have them phone  unexpectedly adopting this new friendly character that one has perhaps programmed somehow into them or the universe. The Law of Attraction might cover this but it does not conclude that I actually am everyone and everything! Again the mind jumps hoops with questions and possible hypotheses and beneath all the thoughts and hypothesis the as yet undefined Real Me looks on…smiling and neutral. This too is my experience.

So what do I know about the Real Me? I know that I am not defined by thoughts or concepts in the mind and I feel I am everything so the mind too is part of me. 

I have been able to separate out from the mind in the same way a good looking expensive handbag might be considered very important and somehow define that person; yet they know that they are not the handbag - yet I find myself at the next level - I know the importance of the handbag is just a thought - a thought that seeks to define a kind of illusory-me. 

”I am the life that I live” covers it quite well. I might also say “I am beneath the mind and the empty space or canvas upon which the mind is fabricated or painted”. It’s all very confusing and a bit shocking to discover that I am not what I thought I was. Trying to define “Me” further seems difficult but being a viewpoint of life and this combination of perceiver and perceived almost covers it.

Try it for yourself as I have said!

The Courage to face the truth

Clearly I have “reinvented” oneness or non-duality and as such have written little here that has not been written before but at least I found it myself as my own truth. The trouble is the mind or the “former me” is unhappy about it. I did not want to be The One and talk to people only to hear messages from the Real Me manifesting through the illusion of another. For a while, every time I met someone I thought “this is just me and I wonder what I am about to tell myself!” I read a book and thought” I didn’t know I spoke Russian because here is a book written in that language and worse it is concerning higher mathematics! How can this be?” The answer of course that returns when I stop thoughts is that “it just is” which isn’t very helpful! Perhaps this is the whole point; the omnipotent God decides that now is the time to pretend she is not the Real Me and become a mortal just to see what it is like. If this was my plan it has worked well and even confronting the way it really is the former me or mini-me as defined by the can be very convincing.

There is Peace in the oneness and it is Peace that surpasses happiness or joy which still are mere emotion and I have heard there is “Bliss” there to be experienced though so far I have not-well I have had moments of extreme grooviness maybe that’s the bliss. Must I tell my mind to have courage to face the truth or shall I carry on as if I never started this process of self-discovery?

My mind is getting the idea slowly. Those moments of telepathy and general metaphysics in my life now fall into place with some sort of explanation. Everything is One -all is connected.

 Have courage – find the truth –have courage!

It is all a bit of a mind-bender but I am getting more comfortable with it.

As I write the book things change and I feel the mind is changing. As I reread and proof read the book I keep correcting the tense of sentences from the present to the past because I (whatever that is) am moving along. So by the time the book finishes will be the current state of affairs. Just read this to get out of it what you may and do your own work on it-or not-as you wish.

Murder is not wrong!

I had to start a chapter with that title –just for the fun of the shock-factor.

But for cold thinkers it should be easy to follow me on this one. For some poor soul who has witnessed some really bad stuff the emotions will have to be separated out from whom they think they are. Ouch –good luck with that! Hugs.

When I just look I see what has been described as “The world is perfect” –not exactly but sort of.

Staring blankly around without thinking and not putting added labelling thought s on things everything seems okay s it is. There seems nothing to fix as nothing has an added judgemental thought placed upon it. It is what it is. I always have been dead against judgement and use the idea that cats are not cruel to mice because to thus label cats as cruel is clearly an additional human label based on our values and morality or based on whatever ideas are in any one person’s mind at the time. It is just their nature for cats to do what they do with mice and cats are just cats. Some words as defined by common usage include the label; murder is one –it is wrongful killing etc. Murder is what it is, which is the killing of one person by another and all that, and whether it be right or wrong is an added human judgement.

We are dealing with good and bad here. When I just look there is no good unsurprisingly as I have removed the goodness and badness labels along with all the others! But it does not mean I am saying sky is not blue because I removed the blue label - the sky is what it is – it just means that I have found a truth within this state of looking at the world without labels. And it’s a new exciting truth that is a view from the Real Me that I have distilled out from the above reasoning and perception. The sky is not the sky and the sky is not blue and murder is not wrong – the “sky”, “blue” and “wrong” are just labels - this is my experience – the experience of the Real Me. The sky and murder are what they are –that is all.

With murder there may be a problem with definitions. In the English language, the dictionary, and in common usage murder may include the wrongness in which case I am on shaky ground –but you get the idea. “Killing is not wrong” maybe is a better example yet less dramatic. Murder may be wrong – if you use it in a sentence that way because you are expressing or discussing a judgement which is fair enough. But generally watch out for the labels that sneak into and onto the world. For me the labels and judgements sort of light up and I feel the mind come in.

[Proof reading]-Yeah, try to avoid the mental intellectual jumping through hoops here – there are labels we put on things and events –be sure to spot them –that’s all.

It is not so much hard to take the labels off things but it does take a while to fully break the habit as I have said. I feel the mind is often keen and fast to jump in with a thought. This is okay as I meet them all with a new thought perhaps “This is just a thought” and then the mind seems to settle down and go quiet while I (whatever that is), the Real Me…er…looks.

I am staring blankly ahead right now without much of a thought about anything! It’s quite an education I can tell you! And, and, and most of all there is Peace and it’s definitely a peace that surpasses all understanding because the understanding normally forms in the mind. Having said that there is an awful lot of Understanding (capital U) within the Real Me -it’s comes with the package!

The Tao Te Ching

Some of you have read it. It was written by a Chinese gentleman a long time ago called Lao Tzu. It is very Zen but perhaps you can read it now and understand more of what he was talking about. How the Tao which perhaps is “Everything and More” cannot be defined and how judgements and human values can be regarded.

In the translations I have read he talks of “holding the centre”. It’s actually a yoga meditation to stand upright and rock back and forth until the body is at the exact balance point until you find the mind has followed and sits in a still balanced place of neutrality and cool groovyness! It’s quite a “Zen moment” and you might try it.

With a blank staring or neutrality or to “just look” I find I can hold the centre. There also is perhaps “softening [the focus of] the eyes” which did help at first but now I don’t bother. Yeah…getting the idea of the body being somehow balanced even when it isn’t really does seem to “send me there”, the mind settles down.

You can read the Tao Te Ching if you like or any other book but if you get the idea I think it’s best to stop reading books altogether and just do it – without “doing” of course!  All the Zen stuff is along these lines and probably worth reading in my not so humble opinion and so are the direct quotes from the Buddha-no shit!

But everything is second hand truth –someone else’s truth –why not stop messing about and find your own? Do you self a favour and make this your last book for a while and then look for yourself otherwise you are doing something in the mind all the time and it will go round and round and round and round!

The Truth - Paloma versus the Masters

Arrogance is bliss again -here we go!

Hmmm. I don’t subscribe to everything all the Masters say. Sorry. Life is what it is. Things are as they are. And me and you are as we are. That’s it –cannot go along with adding anything to it.

“People that live in the mind are unconscious and mad” to paraphrase one legally nameless Master. I cannot go with this. You are not mad – it fails on so many levels here. “Madness” and “unconscious” are judgements and live in the mind –let them stay there.  Think about it all you want - or rather don’t –please look for yourself. What is your truth?

Besides there is no you or me – it’s sort of just a lot of me’s together…Us!

To be honest I don’t know if you really exist at all –do I? You might all be Me as I described. Actually that’s not true entirely. I do feel you are there and you are Me, and I am You. Oh dear. You got to go there!  Oneness.  Non-duality.

With regards to the Real Me - I suppose anything that can be written down isn’t it! That’s not bad as a rule of thumb (an expression with a sad history –but it fits)...not bad as a maxim.  I suppose this applies to The Truth also –although ironically this whole thing has been written, so caution is needed.

I think that’s where the Masters get into difficulties because they have to say so much to explain so little for people to understand.

Whether reincarnation exists or not , or whether we are all mad in the mind or whether we are spiritual beings or actually just bodies here for one life or whether up is really up or not (!) is of no consequence – it is all the mind going round and round and round and round. The mind seems to dictate the manifestation of the world we see and then see it. If you build sandcastles you see sandcastles and if you make spiritual beings you feel the presence of spiritual beings.

Infinite Awareness, awareness, consciousness, the mind and me

[Proof reading] Introducing some new ideas as well here. Add to/update

Definitions. Difficulties often arise in spiritual stuff because of how we define and how authors sometimes redefine these words. I will have a go at filling these words with my own meaning.

The Infinite Awareness for me is the Self the big me or Real Me. It’s an infinite awareness and perhaps Lao Tzu’s “Tao” in the Tao Te Ching . To ask what it is aware of, maybe others or itself or what is does or has, is to play around in mental constructs when would could simply look. It is like asking for exacting definitions and limits of lipstick when the shops are full of them. Go and see! As I have said a gazillion times why not make your own enquiries?  If I say Infinite Awareness, the Real You is full of tomato soup then perhaps you get my point –why should you let me replace your own perception? But I have found Infinite Awareness, the real me to be a wondrous thing that has no thought or concepts defining it – concepts are within it as Everything is within it, but they don’t define it.

Awareness: I would call this the act of perception and not the state of perception perhaps because I can find no doer that perceives except the illusion of a “me” created in the mind.

The mind: I am calling the mind all thoughts, and I throw in emotions as arising out of thought. I tend to include emotions when I speak of “the mind”.

Consciousness is a word that up until now I have made no mention. This is because it simply didn’t crop up in my process of investigation. It’s only by just reading a Zen book that I just thought of it! According to the dictionary consciousness is being aware of being aware and I will stick with the correct English here. Tempting as it is to redefine the word I adamantly will not otherwise the English language falls into madness. English has half a million words in it so why redefine consciousness as maybe “the idea of self “or some such nonsense when there are other words for these different ideas? Any language evolves naturally with popular usage but I feel we should talk about “apples” when we mean apples and not talk about apples when we only feel that the Happy Sunshine Apple Tree Hugging Farm’s apples should only be called apples.

Having said all that consciousness is a funny thing that I might comment upon! It’s tempting for me to say here that consciousness is the seat of spirituality and that Infinite Consciousness might be a “Watching God”!! Eeek. When I look I feel that consciousness is born in awareness, obviously, everything is, but it is important for me to communicate that consciousness, being aware of being aware, seems the first step Infinite Awareness made to give life inasmuch as time doesn’t really exist. It realises “Oh, I am me!” Infinite Consciousness for me is a layer or creation in the Infinite Awareness thing, the Real Me. It’s as if there is a primal Real Me behind the Real Me that is just there unformed and suddenly consciousness was formed and then it said “Let there be Light!” and then “Let there be Life!” But that’s not how it went because there’s not any time to be seen there!” This is my experience through meditation.

There’s an important thing here: a person’s consciousness and the collective infinite consciousness are the same thing.

You may have thought of life as lots of individual consciousness’s floating around (spiritual beings perhaps) and somehow they are connected maybe and form together an Infinite one – or maybe one “Universal Mind”. This is not my experience because when I stopped thinking I found I was everyone. Don’t think about it, try this:-

I feel the mind runs on automatic a lot of the time, maybe all the time. For certain it seems compulsive in labelling objects and in fact when the object is unknown we are prompted to put a label on it. Try this:-

Find an object a little distance from you that you cannot quite see what it is to put a name to it. Maybe it’s a bit of black something or other sticking out from behind something. Notice you feel drawn to walk over and see what it is. Any behavioural psychologist will be able to present you with several books of reasons for this all of which I think boil down to “it’s the mind prompting the question”. I am not too interested whether it’s a survival response or genetic coding or whatever –it’s the mind-good enough!

Let me introduce consciousness. Find another unknown object or use the same one if you didn’t have a look at what it was. This time just look at it and the thoughts about wondering what it is. Look at both the object and the thought-questions-possible answers etc. Now look only at the object without this “what the dickens is that?” label and without entertaining the resultant thought-hypotheses. Just look at it blankly. This is consciousness – we are just aware of being aware before the mind kicks in! If you “stay here” for a while you will find that this consciousness that is you has no limits and you will see what I am generally going on about. From here you can see that your consciousness is actually everyone’s consciousness! You may protest that you are not aware of some bloke in China’s consciousness who you never met but know is there, but this is the mind –it’s a thought. Trust me the more you think about it and neglect to really look for yourself the more and more confusing it all gets. History has produced millions of people that have thought these things through a zillion ways and produced a gazillion different theories - people can be in the habit to turn to the mind for answers. Kindly do not forget my main objective, namely – have a look at the world without a thought!

As you might have guessed I feel a God with His own specific characteristics is created by individuals because they do not realise their power - people as Real Me’s are bigger than A Compassionate God or A Vengeful God (my personal favourite;/ ) because they sit behind

Everything is one thing and that one thing is Me and I have not spotted Myself before because I always have looked to the mind for answers the one place they cannot be found!

Or can they? …More on this later.

“The Big Idea” and Impressions

Let me repeat something from earlier:-

In Advaita, non-duality I have attended lectures in Second Life where there is the quote “The sun is always shining [no matter how cloudy the sky beneath]”. By which they mean no matter what dark dismal thoughts are clouding the Real Me from shining forth, the Real Me is there always. That someone is unaware of their true self is of no importance perhaps. If good and bad are just human thought-labels then people are people and Life is Life. It is what it is. The sun is always shining; the Real Me is always there regardless. Having said that something does not quite feel quite right with the idea of there being no good or bad and that is to do with my feeling that Life is an Idea –a progression, an evolution - but more on that later.

And this:-

But there is something not quite right about throwing all thoughts into the trash –have you felt it? It is something to do with intuition and just knowing –more on this later

.

Why would life be set up where my mind tries to continuously create a thee and me? The answer my friend is available in This; The Now... Have a look for yourself (huge yawn). I would translate my non thinking understanding of it into thought (by writing here) by saying “Why not?” – It is life. It’s actually an Idea .

This is the impression I get when I just look. That is a good word for here –impression – not a thought in the mind but an impression or even “just knowing” or as I like to write it “Knowing” (capital K). Life is an Idea. In the big Infinite Awareness that I am, Life feels like an Idea, a Very Big idea and that Idea is Life. Life clearly is a manifestation that has a lot of living in it! And to have a lot of living there are a lot of survival, changes, growth, and evolution. It just all feels like a Big Idea. The idea includes a lot of living and dying! There are plenty of joyful emotions, plenty of struggling to survive and plenty of suffering to be found in the full spectrum of the lives contained in humans, animals and plants. Life is an idea. Where exactly does the idea come from and who or what is the author of it? The Idea, the Big Idea for Life feels to me like it is within everything and everyone I have met. There is only One Thing and everything else is sort of acting out a part in Its Dream. But like dreams there is a commonality of direction and that direction is to live. Thus the parts contribute and make up the Whole; so the One Big Idea of Life manifests as lots of little ideas to live and these little ideas reside in the world’s multitude of different components.  I feel that Infinite Awareness, the blank neutral thing that is the Real Me and beneath everything,  suddenly had an idea and that idea was life but to form the idea it sort of developed another part of itself concurrently and that part was a Consciousness –hence Universal Consciousness. For me I can feel something behind consciousness, something behind being aware of being aware; it is something that consciousness is made of and that is Infinite Awareness. But here are not two things Consciousness and Infinite Awareness –it’s all one thing.

 I wonder if I should have mentioned Universal Consciousness at all – I wonder if I am creating it … everything is one thing – but somewhere in that one thing is “The Idea” –an idea about Life.

Can you feel it? You got to feel it yourself otherwise this is just another doctrine to add to the millions of dogmas, scripture and constructs out there!

The Universal Consciousness within the oneness is holding an idea about life.

Another way to look at it is as follows. If you die, nature does not care! I can travel to an African wilderness tomorrow, be killed by Tuesday and the animals and the many bugs that eat my body would not weep and neither would the trees or bushes that looked on! This chilling concept to me represents what I have been calling Infinite Awareness. Life is what it is and it is all “live and let die”. But some animals do care. It has been known for a lion to cover a man’s tracks when game hunters were around (hunting game but the lion didn’t know that) and dolphins have saved people from drowning and so forth: this idea to live and survive dwells within my Universal Consciousness construct. Everyone has the idea to live and because everyone is One. Life is really one Big Idea in a Universal Mind or Universal Consciousness.

This is what it all feels like to me anyway!

I suppose the “reason” I have a mind that creates a mini-me, a persona or identity is because without lots of mini-me’s there would not be life -it would all stay as One.  I might also add that we are left with a lot of things that make up the whole and yet all things carry us forward along this path of The Idea. So I could say that Life the universe and everything now runs as a “Plurality” and this plurality (is that a word used outside its definition?) …this Plurality is the Universal Consciousness with the Big idea!...But I am playing with words.

If you are lost with this I would say this:-

 Everything contains an Idea. And that idea is life. And that idea to live is within each of us and the animals and there’s something in plants and in the rocks too.  I feel there is a Big Idea for Life that permeates Everything.

I hardly understand it all myself but there is “Understanding (capital U)” in the Real Me– like I said it all doesn’t translate well into thought and thoughts are all I can offer you here unless you feel my concepts within me directly, which you can of course because we are all One thing and as such no telepathy is needed – you just have to look!

Re- educating the mind

I feel like I am re-educating the mind. Firstly it is sort of not my mind anymore as I feel that I am much more vast than I was before and the mind feels like a little thing sometimes. I have this mind and I have everyone else’s mind – maybe you feel a connection with other people? This would explain it –you are them! Ha-ha. Also the mind contains a lot of thoughts that seek to define a “me”. I.e. “I am cold”, “I like tomato soup”. A large part of the mind’s function would appear to be constantly defining an identity with thoughts, ideas and beliefs. But I say again I have discovered I am not the person I thought I was as defined by these mind computations. I am something else! Also our language is subject based talking all the time about me, you, him, her, it, us and them. The mind and language and the daily lives are thus very western and not eastern as you know and conspire to create a me and you.

I have found no time when thinking stops – everything is happening in this moment. So much so that I would prefer to talk about “This” and not “the Now” as the latter implies linear time past, and future. Here again the mind is very keen about having time and the language reflects this also. Time, linear time is a funny thing –it seems so obviously true. “I know where I left my slippers –under the bed this morning when I woke up”. But even the stoic supporter of time must concede that the past only exists as memory in this moment and even the evidence of the past such as a photograph or gravestone only can be seen now. There is only Now, yesterday’s Now is not here. But rather than argue about time being or not being an illusion we can recognise that this moment only is what is happening and time must therefore be a fabrication, a creation. And the point to this is that if time itself is a construct then it follows that all of Reality and The World also must have a question mark over it….but these are the ramblings of rational thought –better just to look and see the answers: The Answers. Some answers I have seen are here for your enjoyment. Ha-ha. Something made time and I think that something was you and me!

If you want to be a bit “Zen” then I feel you made your time and I made mine –but they are the same yet different. He-he. I suppose this is visible when “times slows down” or a “watched pot never boils” and all that –we seem to have personal time running within us irrespective of clock time.

When I look within I do not see time but on returning to thinking there it is! As I said I think time, linear time is a manifestation of Life, the Idea of life.

I am slowly changing my thinking; re-educating the mind. The person I thought I was as defined and encouraged by the mind is fading away and the Real Me is beginning to shine through. As regards creating a practical useful technology I am cheering up considerably and my depression has lifted completely. I no longer dwell on negative or miserable thoughts and emotions –I just seem to move on more easily. My method has become automatic so that when a dodgy emotion or thought stream pops up I just look at it and be with it and it mostly will melt away. Previously I might have tried to fix or deal with something unwanted in the mind this new approach to thoughts and emotions has meant the mind has changed and the blues that remain are weaker in their effect. Hooray!

Touched by Grace & Who creates ideas?

I think “touched by grace” communicates. It is the idea of being selected or moved by a higher power towards, naturally, a betterment.

How that might fit into this may seem a little strange as there is no good or bad or betterment. Things are as they are. Furthermore, how can I be touched by anything except myself when I am everything? All higher powers are within me –where is this going?

Consider the one individual in the Plurality. This person thinks they are a separate person as they follow along their daily lives relying on the rational mind to reason through questions and difficulty to try and resolve their general happiness or lack of it. Why would such a person or idea of a person “see the light”? Well clearly I could say they were touched by Grace, but all I am apparently doing here is negating all the things I have written so far and starting what appears to be another line of thought. How does this tie in?

It is just taking the person viewpoint. The fact remains that within the frame of a lifetime or many lifetimes someone may or may not have this concept occur to them. The way it feels to me is that all creative ideas come from the oneness or infinite awareness behind and within the individual. It’s as if nothing creates any ideas except infinite awareness and the illusion is that it is the person’s mind that does so. The light that shines in people is from this source –this is my experience. Thus everyone follows the Big Idea of life. In this world there are trees and flowers and animals and happy people and sad people –why might something here realise these things that you and I have realised? Why would a small part of the plurality become oneness–aware? Why do you perceive this and others will never consider it? I find it hard to write an answer but I have felt the answer. I think it is becoming clear that it was not my mind alone that gave me this line of reasoning and the Quest for Peace.

I not sure I know how to write further on this. I would say part of me feels grateful and honoured. The good feelings in the mind are life and in life good is better than bad –that’s how it works in the mind and that is the Big Idea. It could be that the Big Idea innately has love, compassion and a spiritual evolution of beings within It, in which case minds may be freed as part of the plan. It becomes more and more clear that the person I thought I was centred in the mind is not really a person as the western thinking might expect.

Is a person really a free thinker acting on their own free will? My answer is yes and no. Yes because they daily make decisions and No because everything is - if you like – a Dream in the Mind of God –and thus they are puppets to that extent. It’s a little like a room thermostat. It "decides" to switch on because the temperature is low enough but there are so many other causes and reasons for its very existence and power (the electricity mains supply) that the whole “decision” cannot be the thermostat’s alone. So it is with people; we are here, the manifestation of an Idea, and we act following that Idea and that we feel we decide is in almost the same way a thermostat feels it “decides”. If you sometimes feel you are not running your life and everything seems either chance or somehow out of your hands then you might relate more readily to this.

But all these things just mean that we are the One and not the little person we thought we were.

The illusion of the person just got worse, as I question whether there is such a thing as free-will at all within the persona or mind-manufactured “me” –sorry about that!!!

I have seen or I have been shown a glimpse of the Real Me and for this for some strange reason there is a feeling of humble gratitude and touched by Grace, I cannot really explain it because if I am everything I should just watch on with some indifference. But it all makes sense – I understand it.

Have a look for your self –what do you feel?

Creating the world-(this is the heavy stuff!)

Most of the enlightened folk, gurus and Masters normally stop at this point and continue the message “I am Everything “offering insights depth and more ways to look at it. But I want to go further. How does this relate to creating real changes in the physical world that many has experienced used such tools as: The Law of Attraction, positive thinking and the power of belief?

I said earlier that beliefs shape the world. This is old news being set down by among others Napoleon Hill in his book “Think And Grow Rich”(1937) and  the early 1900s by the authors of the New Thought Movement including at that time what I think is the first mention of the Law of Attraction and then repeatedly since the dawn of written record. It’s one of the first things spiritual types realised. “What you think is what you get”.

This means then that while I am Everything that by the power of thought i.e. the mind, I can change the world –my whole world. This is where I should say now I can have the perfect job, money in the bank a great new house and car but unfortunately I really don’t want those –sorry. I want Peace and The Truth, everything else is piffle. I actually also want to help the world and make it somehow a nicer more loving place with less suffering and happier trees and fluffy animals – no seriously I do! I will concede that a million or two in the bank would be very nice as it might allow some easing of life’s pressures but I could imagine a person’s depression  slowly returning once the lottery win euphoria had worn off. Maybe rich and miserable is better than poor and miserable -I don’t know.Haha.

So am I creating the whole of the world I perceive with the mind? Probably, possibly.  The only way to find out is to use this new source of “Real Data” and “Real Knowledge” in the Real Me and not chew it over endlessly and uselessly like I have done before. There is Knowledge in this real me. There is lots of stuff I can feel it and the more I feel it the more electric it becomes!

Let me just look…   …Okay I looked and this is what I am getting…

Am I creating the world? Yes. Am I using my mind to do so? Yes and no –I am using your mind also!!! That is what I feel, this is my experience.

Repeating something from the last section, I wrote this:-

Is a person really a free thinker acting on their own free will? My answer is yes and no. Yes because they daily make decisions and No because everything is - if you like – a Dream in the Mind of God –and thus they are puppets to that extent. It’s a little like an electric thermostat. It ”decides” to switch on because the temperature is low enough but there are so many other causes and reasons for its very existence and power (the electricity mains supply) that the whole “decision” cannot be the thermostat’s alone. So it is with people; we are here, the manifestation of an Idea, and we act following that Idea and that we feel we decide is in almost the same way a thermostat feels it “decides”. If you sometimes feel you are not running your life and everything seems either chance or somehow out of your hands then you might relate more readily to this. But all these things just mean that we are the One and not the little person we thought we were. 


The illusion of the person just got worse, as I question whether there is such a thing as free-will at all within the persona or mind-manufactured “me” –sorry about that!!!

Rather than worrying that you do not have free will shift to the bigger viewpoint, the Real You, oneness, Infinite Awareness with the Universal Mind and Universal Consciousness and Everything within it! Now you have free will don’t you! No worries ha-ha.

Re-consider the created persona, the part that constantly maintains that “I have too much money” (!) or “my house is smaller than hers”, I am this and he is that and with each thought seems to continuously convince the mini-me that it is separate from the world out there. The mind thinks in separation, you and I always are separate here and the reality is real and so is time in a real physical world! But that is Life and without separation they would not be life as we know it.

With regard to creating the world then we have two points of view at least. Forget about creating miracles with thought for a moment: when you walk to the shops or even lift your arm to drink a cup of tea, are you not performing an amazing act and creating the world? This is clearly within your power. By what mechanism or steps does this mundane power that we all have, work? We all feel I am sure that moving the body around is the act of making a decision, and what follows is movement. Who makes the decision? I have established to my satisfaction that the mind is composed of thoughts which I can label as things the same way I label traffic on the roads, handbags and lipstick as things which means the mind is a thing. This is my experience. Can the mind then with this “thing-like quality” make decisions and decide to have a cup of tea? Hmmm! Well it does generate thought and in volume! I feel the mind generates ideas as thought i.e.  “I must lose some weight” but it doesn’t seem to actually decide “I will leave for the gym now”; so who does? There is only one viewpoint left and that is the Real Me! It is as if the Real Me’s power to make Everything is channelled through the filter of the mind and thus with billions of minds running at once we have the Plurality. For example: the mind makes the thought that “I have no self-confidence” and channels aligned creations by the Real Me so that I call in sick for the job interview. For beliefs: the mind has set up the idea of “mini-me”, along with houses and businesses and profit as being separate from me and desirable; and thus the real Me might be channelled to create the idea that “I can have that new house as my business gets more and more profitable”. Napoleon Hill and others use this type of belief repeatedly “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve” and that power is from the Real Me and the Real You and the mind only has to filter or allow the most amazing miracles through and thus they are manifested. “Allowing” is a word we hear a lot with regard to the Law of Attraction and generally in the creating miracles technologies.

I feel this is the mechanism:  the mind filters the power of oneness and thus we have our daily lives. From here we have surprises, suffering, desire, resistance, television and unemployment and everything because we expect them to occur which perhaps represents the summation of limitation that many spiritual authors discuss. I really don’t want you to get all excited and rush off now and make millions but I have read enough of these books  for you to anticipate my next comment along the lines of “You can have anything you want” Ha-ha. Who are you? You are not this little mind –based persona you are the Big Cheese, the Infinite Awareness! You already have everything you want; you are Peace! But there is much more to this than visualising (you have read these books also!); visualising the way to satisfy desire.

I have said earlier that when thinking stops the world seems to go flat and play out like a video on my eyeballs! Am I creating the whole world? Well yes and no. Yes, because I am Everything and No, because I can live via the identity in a mind-based me. The Plurality (everyone and every thing) creates the world in total but yet I am the Plurality. The Real Me creates the world through your mind as well as mine. It is as if we created an adventure playground and then pretend

This is why some of the Masters, current and historical, have said that the world is being created every moment: because it is. This is my experience.

From here we can see how the statement “time does not exist” can be justified, but time does exist as I have said but it exists with the same certainty that your computer exists or all of reality exists – an uncertain certainty!

From here it has been my experience that Everything is in my imagination, like a (self-created) dream. Dreams can have unexpected content and in this way so is the world. Seeing it this way would flood my mind with questions. Mostly “Why?” Why create a dream world and then fool myself into thinking it is real. The other chief question that arose was “How?”. “If I am creating this dream, then who are the other people and can how can they be creating their world and how does it all overlap and fit in?  The answer I found cannot be accurately written as I saw it without thinking and it sits outside of the mind and this written world of thought. But I can put up signposts to it here with these words.

 And the best signpost answer I can give is “Why not?”  We are dealing with the capacity of the Infinite. What can The God not do? Are there impossible things for God? Two things can occupy the same space at the same time, opposites can sit together, and we are all, each of us The God. As the Americans might say “We are not in Kansas anymore!” and as the British might possibly say ”Darling, I think you have driven off the map!”

Meditation tips

I think the illusion of the world is being accepted by my mind. “I” the mini-me, is more comfortable with it. I just have to push my mind towards a more Real Me point of view. But as I have said - it doesn’t matter –not really – life goes on whether I have a self-realised mind or not. The real me is doing frightfully well old chap, frightfully well!

So when meditating upon this, should you trouble yourself to do so, start from the Real Me , oneness, Infinite Awareness viewpoint. From here the mind will be prompted to have more thoughts of non-duality and not the separation blues!

You might also consider that the concept of the “Monkey mind” that is a popular belief in this sphere, where “our minds ceaselessly think and can hardly be stopped” is just a thought and filtering the Real You’s power to make this manifest. It is also complete crap in my not so humble opinion. Number one, you don’t have to stop thinking for forty five minutes to meditate; a few moments can be a lifetime here! Number two, I always found it very easy to stop thinking using the spotting thoughts techniques above. I stare blankly ahead, recognise a few thought labels on what I am looking at and the thoughts seem to stop on command within a few seconds or so. I suppose I have created the belief that I am in control of my mind on these occasions – though as you know I have experienced difficulties with the mind in the past.

If you meditate with eyes closed and shut out other perceptions, I suspect you will zoom off into the Infinite Void and blast your little brain out. Sounds good though! I have not tried it yet!

What do you feel? (What’s your truth?)

It is all a bit of a mind-bender but I am getting more comfortable with it.

Am I a Soul or Spiritual Being?-Going deeper into it!

So plentiful are the ideas about what a soul is that, I really didn’t know how people define it these days and I had to default to the English dictionary!

The spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal…definition 1. The New Oxford American Dictionary

The spiritual part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal …definition 1. Oxford English Dictionary

I am British (London) but I put the American definition first out of politeness!

That is what a soul is because that is how language works, we define words standardly and everyone knows what everyone means when they speak!  If you want to redefine “soul” to include Jesus or The Buddha then that is up to you but do not be surprised when people do not understand what you are saying! Redefining words or using them in an unusual way makes nice poetry sometimes and can also be fun but it has its place. “I almost slaughtered the car and flew to work”. So questions like “What is a soul?” are slightly sloppy and unprofessional in my not so humble opinion, it is dreamy word play. “Yes, but what is a kiss?” and all that. People might be better to be more exacting such as “What does a soul consist of?” So to some extent we know what a soul is – it is in the dictionary. (I quite liked the what is a kiss thing –makes you go all tingly –he he)

Looking at the definition of soul carefully, I think is a little different to “spiritual being”. The spiritual being is normally regarded as sometimes being in or near or controlling a body and includes some separation from all things meat-body and is not always regarded as a “part of a human being or animal”. “Spiritual being” has the completely incorporeal aspect to it and I do not think “soul” properly embraces that.

Whatever. I want to forget about “soul” -it is not a word that has a use for me, it doesn’t quite fit.

I like “spiritual being” better and hesitate to define it but might say it is the immortality that a person might experience were they to find their body had died. I see the spiritual being surviving body death complete with their mind and its full mental capacity along with their consciousness. Spiritual being for me is what I am now minus my body. The “person” for me has always been the spiritual being irrespective of the body they are pushing around.

Spiritual beings and non-duality

I did slip the word consciousness in there and here sits the non-duality I have discussed. Consciousness is being aware of being aware, and I am aware of being Everything. I should immediately tie individual consciousness together with my idea stated earlier that the Real Me is filtered through the mind which governs how much of the Infinite we allow. Not only do we define our world with the mind but I feel we also define our very selves with the allowing. The mechanism of allowing is seated in our beliefs, belief systems and expectation and thus we create our consciousness, its vastness or smallness, our mortality or immortality which becomes a construct of limitation from this Infinite source or resource. I feel my selection of what is true changes myself and the whole world I perceive.

Creating ourselves and the world

This means that I am creating the world and myself in it according to the dictates of my expectation and beliefs – this is a bit hard to swallow. Again I suggest putting your mind into the Real Me viewpoint. You are The God –now it should all seem clearer. Perhaps Creation runs along the lines of creating different aspects of yourself in different scenarios to see what that is like. But this new Creation Theory (!) I have squeezed in is only my truth- maybe you see the “decent from Godhead” in another way and because Everything is all infinite –you would be right! You see we are talking about what happened in the past with Creation Theory but there is only Now, This Moment and so the past is also part of the Dream. As an aside it does mean you can change your past but more on that later!

I don’t think that was so clear – I really need to swap viewpoints properly? Try the next bit:-

You are God

Let your mind play around with the idea of being an Infinite God for a while: then tell me what is not possible!!! Funny thing is you are The infinite God – well, maybe you are not –but I am!  he he.

As an Infinite God does time exist? Clearly yes if you create it and no if you don’t and wouldn’t you be able to see all of time at once?

And what of people might they be created to have lives that they thought were real?

But being Everything and making Everything wouldn’t everyone, all people, actually be made inside of you or be part of you so that each person actually was you (like drops of water in the sea)?

Is there anything that isn’t just You, The One Thing?

Does a rock know it is God? Does a plant know it is God? Does a fluffy pussy cat know it is God? Does a human being know it is God?  Maybe, maybe, maybe, and maybe! What’s the problem?

What’s the problem?  He he!

The problem is that we may not believe we are the Real Me or the Infinite God and from there the gas bill needs paying and the bank has been on the phone again: that’s the problem.

I can say little here to convince you but my main thrust (Ooooo Matron!) is to ask that you make your own investigations and just look for yourself.

[I forgot to tie spiritual beings and non-duality together in this section – how can I be a spiritual being when I am Everything? – read on – these things are revisited. 3^rd March 2013]

 

What to do if you find a Master

This concerns the limits of communicating by writing and the advantages of being directly with someone. By now you may have come to know that thoughts are in the mind and that thus to write is just to communicate a thought. When we wish to transfer ideas that are inherently not in the mind or a thought clearly there are writing difficulties!

But if you meet a Master or Guru face to face, you might experience a direct transfer telepathically without thought!

Were you to bombard the Master with questions he would just answer with words based on thoughts based approximately upon what he really wants to communicate. And at this point you would be no better off than reading his book!

My advice to you, should you meet a Master, male or female, is to ask nothing; only that you might sit quietly with them. You will find that questions form in the mind and that they are answered but not with explanations that form in your mind as thoughts but as a communication to you that is this Understanding (capital U) from the Knowledge (capital K) that the Master (capital M) has.

You should soon discover that you are both really the same thing. Behind the mind there is oneness and in the oneness you will come to know what the Master knows. When you leave your mind may or may not kick in with a load of questions and so forth – but the Real You will Know, it always Knows, but your mind will have been educated by the experience!

Inasmuch as there is no distance between the Real Me and things and that all is One; then I could ask you to sit with a chosen master now though physically there is the illusion of distance between you. Are we not all together anyway?

Speaking of distances: Papaji says (in a video on YouTube) that “Consciousness does not move”. Though we travel from place to place it is the world that moves and we as consciousness are unmoving. This has been my experience also and every now and then I have felt the world “rolling underneath my feet” like being on a gym running machine.  Ponder on this or better, just look!

Have a go at all this –see how you get on!

Be the master you are looking for!

The mind (mostly) thinks thoughts concerning separation from the whole which should be your experience. Objects are perceived as “over there”, or “out there” and “not me”. Quantum physics and my personal researches would indicate that all is one and there is no “out-there” out there.

 Meanwhile back in the mind such concepts as “I am creating the whole world this instant” and “everything I read or person I talk to is actually myself”; just make the mind go pop! It’s all a bit too much to think about especially as the answers that form in thought seem unsatisfactory and go on and on and on.

Clearly there is no understanding, but there can be Understanding or Knowledge; no understanding in the thinking mind (perhaps) but a handle on it grasped when thoughts stop. This is my experience as I have said; there is Understanding behind the mind.

I had this nifty idea to be one’s own Master or Guru! In the same way I recommended not asking for verbal answers and just sitting silently with a Master, we could just sit silently with our own thoughts! Clearly I have reinvented meditation – haha; but the point is maybe you can see this line of logic comprising: not seeking our own thoughts to explain it all because we would ask no questions with a Master. We are just sitting with questions about how it all works that form in the mind. There are signposts to what is going on in the mind and some signposts can be very clear but I could say that the questions, questions, questions that arise in the mind can only receive signposts from the mind for answers.

I do however press on and offer answers but the best answer for a question is maybe a smile or “Why not!” as I have offered earlier.

You should be getting the idea by now: I am That.

Is this just another belief system?

I have got to say “No it is not!”

The reason for that is the above is my experience when thoughts stop i.e. when all beliefs stop.

However,I might have said it is “yes and no” to another belief system and the yes- reason is as follows.

The mind has to get used to the idea of Oneness once Oneness has been experienced and probably because the mind cannot see Oneness itself it needs a load of new thoughts or beliefs to explain it all-another belief system. Maybe just maybe once the mind has sufficient belief the person becomes worthy of the appellation “self-realised” or “Enlightened”. The way to do this is to experience plenty of Oneness and convince the mind of the true state of affairs! Keep meditating!

The key here is that perception must be ultimately superior to thinking. I know perception can be fooled and the delusion can be resolved by thinking but when thinking fails there is only perception. And thinking for me has failed – it can provide no sensible comment on what I have perceived and has a history of negativity promulgating despair that hardly recommends it! I have “seen” Oneness and I cannot explain it – nor do I want to; because within my “vision” all my thoughts were seen as invalid.

For myself I could do without some of the mental drama that occurs but otherwise I sort of enjoy it all because deep down I know “I am That” and That’s That!

Is the answer in the mind after all?

If you read around this subject or watch the video recordings or the Masters and Gurus they all seem to say that there are no answers in the mind and that the mind is trying to impossible to see something which it cannot. Indeed I have repeatedly said this sort of thing.

From earlier:-

Everything is one thing and that one thing is Me and I have not spotted Myself before because I always have looked to the mind for answers the one place they cannot be found!

Or can they? …More on this later.

Let’s talk about that old analogy “drops of water in the ocean”.

Imagine you are looking at the Sea off the coast of Britain or the Ocean off the coast of other countries! As you examine a tiny section of the water there are two drops of water there apparently called “Fred” and “Margaret”. Fred and Margaret start talking to you and explaining how different they are even though you cannot see where one starts and the other finishes. Fred explains how his shape is well defined and Margaret maintains she is hotter than a lot of drops out there! You stare in bewilderment because to you they look like just two voices coming out of parts of the same thing. You get the idea.

So to look at one person or even an object is actually to look at the whole –The One Thing. How many things including all objects, all people are there in the world, in the universe and other universes? A  lot? Yes –but there is only One Thing!  Right? There is just One. So to look at anything is to see the whole. Sometimes you may have felt or read that “everything is inside everything”. You have got to go there –but this is my experience.

So what about a thought? Isn’t it too just a drop in the ocean? Isn’t everything there when we look at a thought?

Thoughts and the mind generally deal in the business of separation and not oneness. “Look at all the different people” and “my socks are missing”. It is all me and you and stuff out there –separation. But the separation is part of Life. It’s the separation ideas in the world that make the world we know and love! The very thoughts that thus far have been public enemy number one to Enlightenment actually make the world we see. They construct the people around us by creating the idea that people are something they really are not –Fred and Margaret. Thoughts are part of Life and possibly the fabric of Life as it manifests. The whole concept of separation sits in oneness as we know –everything does –but it’s the thought created separation that sort of makes the world turn.

So a thought isn’t such a bad thing after all. He he.  How do I see oneness and the Real Me from a thought or inside a thought? I don’t know-but I do!

Have a look at a thought they are quite plentiful but looking at one can be quite a slippery business. Mine was “the table looks strong enough but if it collapses the PC will fall and be damaged”. I am using a curious fold away table for my work desk at the moment. Here is separation by this thought –there seems to be no oneness in it anywhere. But the thought makes me smile when I look at it –it is Life! The table and PC and even a collapsing table are all part of the Real Me, but the thought is the key to making the world as I play it.

It’s hard to explain but the idea of separation and any given stream of thoughts are part of the world and just seem to make me smile. From a thought and the mind’s general broadcast which is “Radio Separation” I can see the oneness. Can you?

I suppose the key here is watching thoughts. This perhaps is all I am doing but previously watching thoughts was to sort of get rid of thoughts, to sit with them while they dissolved and to encourage no more thoughts to occur. So now you can perhaps welcome them and see how the separation plays out!

I quite like the idea of feeling the separation that is occurring in the mind –it’s kind of groovy! It’s definitely life. I suppose a more useful method is to look at thoughts this way when we perhaps feel bombarded by them. When some sort of mental crisis occurs (“my bum does look big in this”) or when a stressful situation develops (“I can’t believe you didn’t say anything”). When the mind and Radio Separation is giving us the Full Monty then maybe I will see the oneness in it. I will have to try and get stressed to try it!

Have a go at it!

The Mind goes “Wow!”

I was looking at the London night time skyline and a crescent waxing moon. And I was in the oneness. And my mind went “wow”. I could feel my thoughts running for cover, hiding under bushes and peeping out with the little brain they are in exploding! Something like that! And the feelings were pure delight, bewilderment, and wonder.

When I get into this, there is nothing there that the mind can get to grips with. I find the odd thought coming through as an attempted translation such as “Everything is a miracle” or  “everything is here”. And later if I keep looking at the mind I might get a question like “how am I doing this?”.  The explanations and answers are blowing in the wind –they really are!

I have written last year that “understanding is the booby prize” and you can see how this fits in. A thought based rational mind understanding is only a vain hope for people with very high IQs and heavy lensed spectacles; the experts! The experts tell us that the Earth is the centre of the universe and the Sun and stars rotate around us –or have they changed that now? He-he. Everything is Here and it is wonderful. Any expert or book you consult is part of yourself and if you can convince your mind of this new state of affairs you will be called  “Enlightened”.

The Sun is always shining. If you just get to have the briefest glimpse of who you really are you will never think the same again! A millisecond’s worth of oneness is all that is required in your meditation and that millisecond you will discover is Everything.

There is nothing to attain or to fix or to achieve nor is there any path or lesson or journey –you are what you are. You may feel your mind or soul to be on a journey and there may be signs, lessons and messages within the books you read, or from the people you meet, or from your Higher Self, or from God, or from Gods or from Angels and there may be joy and there may be pain and there may be suffering and all of this can all be the truth – but the journey and whole crazy ride is a Play within the Everything you are – it is the world of separation from oneness, and it’s totally cool, and it is Life and it is You .

Enjoy

The Method for Peace

But I can “step by step” the method I have used on myself and others :-

1.      Be familiar with the ideas I have written down.

2.      We are trying to look without thinking. Thinking is a habit that can fall away more and more on command. Some of you will find you can just stop thinking and stare at the world –if so, do that!

3.      Look at an object and the thought that seems with it. See both the object and the thought as things and something to perceive.

4.      Do not entertain any questions that may arise – just watch them as more thoughts.

5.      If answers to questions arise in the mind just look at them as well.

6.      Any memories, desires, goals, happy thoughts, or sad thoughts that arise just observe them as things. They are not you.

7.      Watch all the beliefs you have about everything! It takes courage to just see ones deepest core beliefs as just thoughts and just things that are not me. But this is what I did.

8.      Just look at what you are perceiving. Look at your world.

9.      For emotions. Just look at them. They may surround you. Watch them. Feel them. They are not you.

10.  Ask “who am I?” and “where am I?”. Ask yourself this every now and then.

11.  Cycle through watching thoughts of any of the above description as they arise.

12.  You can try looking for a thought. Sometimes there are none to be seen and from here just look at your world and ask “Who am I” and “where am I”

13.  You can try looking for your mind also. Sometimes doing this it suddenly hides!

14.  Be courage and vigilant to spot the clever thoughts that are true or demand answers. Default to “Is this a thought?” “And is it me?” . My strongest courage  vigilance and determination was needed here.

15.  Be familiar with my expansion of the word “labels”. Labels are the names the mind puts on objects. Look at the root ones IE “a cup”,”green” “over there- a distance from me”, “close to me”. There is not the “song of a blackbird outside” there is just the chirping –without the “chirping” label!

16.  See, listen, smell and the tactile stuff –your feet on the floor etc…. And if eating ,taste! But without the thoughts “listening and seeing” etc.

17.  You should find as myself and others have, that there is no separation between what you perceive and who you are or your limits.

18.  Keep going through this.

19.       Just look.

20.     “Is this a thought?”

21.     “Is this an emotion?”

22.     “This is a thought and not me”

23.     “This is an emotion or feeling, and not me”

24.     “ This is one of those complicated or absolutely true thoughts but it is just a   thought and not me” (courage may be required)

25.   “This is a very strong emotion or feeling that seems everywhere surrounding me but it is not me”

26.      Just look

27.     “Where am I?

28.     “Who am I?”

29.     Sit with questions that form in the mind –without seeking thoughts for answers. If thought-answers come or confusion comes –just sit with that also –Watch it all. 

30.  [added 3rd March]

For: labels on objects and events, worries, desires, ambitions, goals, beliefs, memories, questions, answers to the questions, ideas, arguments, referenced quotes, all theories, all hypotheses, religious doctrine, confusion(“I am confused”) and especially thoughts that seem true...

….default to:-

Is this a thought?

 31.  [added 3rd March]

Some thoughts from the Gods put in your mind:-

“There is data and knowledge outside of the thinking mind”.

"It is what it is"

"Why? I will tell you why! Why not?!"

Questions, questions, questions

(24^th Feb 2013 – a week later)

Enlightenment as I have said and as should be pretty clear by now is a “Self-realized” mind; the idea that I really am a Big Self or Real Me, I am Everything has been accepted by the mind. At this point the mind goes quiet and often almost vanishes altogether. A friend of mine in Second Life is Enlightened and she said words to the effect that after it happened she didn’t have a thought for a year  and she had to start up an identity to get back into the world a bit more. (This is not a requirement or prerequisite!)

With regard to questions we have seen how questions about all this are just thoughts and as such engender answers that also are thoughts and they cannot seem to grasp the concept. The thought question/thought answer process is doomed to failure. Yet I find the mind still even at my very advanced stage (ha-ha) asking questions; and worse I ponder on thoughts for answers until I catch myself doing it. The mind is basically saying “I don’t understand this” which in reality means I keep thinking “I don’t understand this”.

I have mentioned viewpoints before. A viewpoint as I use it here in spirituality just means a point of view and the different ways of looking at things whether from Fred’s or Mary’s view of the world: or within oneself and considering things from the view of for example, “nothing matters”. Things regarded from different viewpoints show a different view!

And so it is here with these questions. A question about Enlightenment posed in the viewpoint of the mind-the ego- the identity-the persona, the “mini-me”, Paloma Porta seem to be baffling. Should this question drift into Myself when going all groovy in the oneness it just answers itself. You will not be surprised to hear by now that when I return to thinking no satisfactory translation into a thought or idea is found.

 There are these two viewpoints: the mini-me and the Real Me.

If Mary is feeling unwell do you ask a total stranger on the bus what is wrong with your friend Mary? No. Why? How would he know?!  So for questions formed in the mind about oneness or the Big Me why ask for an answer in the mind? How would it know?  How would you, the mini-me, know?! You have got to change viewpoints: ask Mary for her viewpoint, not the stranger and ask the cool and groovy Real You, not your mini-me mind.

I think questions are a habit. The rational mind for westerners seems to run on automatic a lot of the time and thinks that thinking, and thinking a lot, and thinking really cleverly will provide the answers to anything.

Bottom line: thinking will fail you in this- (mostly-see later); this is my experience. Even the thought “I will stop thinking” though a great start is not what I am doing when in the oneness – and am not “stopping thoughts”, I am not doing anything.

Some questions that others ask I can field easily with an answer (a thought) for them. Questions arising in my own mind seem to rattle around in there for a while until I realise what’s going on.

Switch viewpoints and give the mind a leg up onto the Big Horse of oneness! Start with “Okay, I am Everything –what was the question?” I found it goes a lot smoother that way and intellectual banter aside, you might well pop out of some unshakable foul mood into a Blessed Peace J. Peace. The Quest for Peace.

Is the mind public enemy number one here?

The very great minds in my opinion are those that can resign and turn the person beneath the mind to look elsewhere. “I don’t know but maybe I can feel my way with intuition”. The poet or artist that knows if she “lets her mind go blank” the best stuff will come to her.

For this one’s mind has to have the idea (a thought) that: there is data and knowledge outside of the thinking mind. This is why experts and academics often are not really experts and not worth two cents or tuppence ha’penny: because they fail to grasp this empirical fact (found by thousands of people doing it). They think they can only think!

They laugh at the witches and shamans, don’t they? But it just manifests ignorance to be all scientific one minute and then refute statistically proven metaphysical stuff as “coincidence”, the next. Too many people have refused to get into or into vehicles that later came to misfortune, because of a strange premonition or feeling, to be discounted. And if more folk troubled themselves to see the proper scientific work done by scientists, in scientific laboratories in scientific buildings that wrote scientific Papers on men, women and children that reincarnated … that alone would be a blessing.

“There is data and knowledge outside of the thinking mind”. This is a superb thought – a thought of the Gods, a Holy Thought from The Divine – a thought Touched By Grace.

Let your mind work from this thought, and verily I say unto you, “Ye shall be freed” (ha-ha).

“There is data and knowledge outside of the thinking mind”. (It is worth repeating).

So it’s pretty clear then. Look outside of your mind for some proper answers to Life, The Universe and Everything: otherwise you will continue to do what philosophy and most religion has done for several thousand years - think a lot.

How do you think I know all this stuff?

Nothing to fix nothing or attain and The Dynamic Tao

 The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.

Anne Frank

Many of you know where this is going. All is oneness, all is Peace and as lots of people like to say “all is perfect”.

This is something I have experienced which is a “place” where suffering doesn’t really exist –Everything just looks okay. Many have seen this sort of thing in the oneness and many of you have read it. If you can just stop thinking for a few seconds and look at the world you may see it too.

However.

Something doesn’t sit quite right with this for me. The Enlightened Masters that I have watched on YouTube and so forth are on YouTube and so forth(!) –why? Why do they bother –there is nothing to fix and people are okay as they are? Why do they set up themselves in Ashrams and write books (not easy!!) and do all this “saving mankind” stuff?

It is something they feel motivated to do. And the Motivator is the The Tao, The Light, The Big Cheese, The Oneness, The One thing, Infinite Awareness, The Real Them that sits behind Everything and is Everything. As I have said before there is only one thing in the world and that one thing is running the show.

Also I mentioned that Life is an Idea , a very Big Idea in the Real Me, Infinite Awareness.

So the dynamic aspect of the oneness seems even more evident. The sitting around in Bliss concept for enlightenment doesn’t quite fit. There is a “doing” here after all.

What follows is my experience:-

I was in a bookshop and feeling a bit tired and suddenly a wave of Peace and Bliss came over me and I dropped out of the Identity and a set of emotions that I was in. I was there slightly teary eyed for a minute or two. But in the glory of it I feel a pull – a wanting to return to The Game. It was not a thought. It was just a returning to “the separation” here where we live.

I have wondered if my attachment to people’s well-being has held me back from the Enlightenment Thing – Attachment is bad (!) as you know !  God help anyone with attachment  -ha-ha. But it’s all deeper than attachment or thought somehow.

From the viewpoint of Paloma Porta the mini-me I have always felt that it is sort of uncouth to waltz off into a land of Bliss when there are people whether they be illusions, fiction or not really real and only an idea, that are left behind to suffer. I have experienced suffering as a depressed identity – it feels very real and though I see it all now as a fabrication the suffering is a real as this computer whether they both be construct-illusions or not. This is my thing though – for others I can see how leaving for The Bliss would be fabulous.

I think this is the “Dynamic Tao”. The oneness is not a neutral numb thing though there is that in it. I can imagine “saints and snails” as just the same, but also I can see saints as Saints!

Kindly also consider:- A world without suffering would be, not a hell, but certainly not much of a game. Try having everything you ever wanted and I bet after a hundred thousand years of so you would be bored to death! You would be on your knees in prayer begging for some misfortune –even a little one!

…. So here you are with an Infinite Potential as the “Real You”. What sort of thing do you want to do? You might find to your horror that you would like to play out the miserable life you have now!!!  “Oooooo it’s all going wrong and getting worse and worse and I believe it all as well –It’s fantastic!!!!”

For the bigger picture you, The Creator Of Everything, you have lots of people and animals and planets and all sorts of things all zooming around -  all doing Life. But there is this curiosity of humanity – people with these minds –what to do with them? Hmmm?

When I “go into” the oneness I feel this dynamic direction in which Life is heading. It’s more than a “go forth and multiply” it also has a cycle of creation and absorption within in. Sometimes called the Out –Breath of Brahma (creation) and the In-Breath of Brahma (returning to One) which apparently is His day and night –whatever.

So tying this all together I feel that we are currently just tipping over the cusp of the In Breath. The cycle for re –uniting us clearly would be an awakening, a Spiritual Awakening. (OMG I am God). The In Breath and Awakening is dynamic –there is stuff being done.

 

Concurrent with Awakening is what? The reduction of suffering! So perhaps this is the root of my “concern” for people that are suffering. The suffering that feels okay and sort of an illusion but yet still is something to sort out!

This explanation is pretty harsh. It’s sort of cold. There are elements to it I cannot possibly explain because there are things here I can live in the Oneness yet have no idea how to write down. There is Love and there is Compassion at the root of it all.

This is my experience. This is my truth. What’s your truth?

Did I communicate to you –did you understand?

Be grateful I didn’t write it like Chuang Tzu
Thinking about thinking!

There is a beginning. There is a not yet beginning to be a beginning. There is a not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be a beginning. There is being. There is nonbeing. There is a not yet beginning to be nonbeing. There is a not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be nonbeing. Suddenly there is being and nonbeing. But between this being and nonbeing, I don't really know which is being and which is nonbeing. Now I have just said something. But I don't know whether what I have said has really said something or whether it hasn't said something.

Chuang Tzu

When I talk to people about this extremely simple concept they think. Yet I have asked them not to think. Yet still they think and finding no answers there, they ask questions. And I ask them to ignore the questions they see as they too are just thoughts, ignore all thoughts, so they decide to think some more!

So I give analogies of drops of water in the Sea and fishes swimming and discuss the mini-me and the mind and the Big Me and Oneness and all that and people think some more!

Why is this? What is so seductive about thinking? Part of it is habit for sure. Society encourages thinking and thinking is much more needed in our lives, probably more than it has ever been. If a non-comprehension arises we think about it –what else can you do? Right? Secondly there is language as I have said: it deals with separation in its essence with me, you, them; the separation and descriptions of subject and object. Thirdly there is the “phenomenon of beliefs” –of which you may be aware.

These three especially the last, might explain the difficulty.

The “Phenomenon of beliefs”

What you believe you get. And if you don’t believe that then it still is true – well sort of, because it just makes the statement true only one time in the negation of it! – Doesn’t matter –let’s move on.

What you believe you get. I have sort of discussed this earlier.

I said earlier that beliefs shape the world. This is old news being set down by among others Napoleon Hill in his book “Think And Grow Rich”(1937) and  the early 1900s by the authors of the New Thought Movement including at that time what I think is the first mention of the Law of Attraction and then repeatedly since the dawn of written record. It’s one of the first things spiritual types realised. “What you think is what you get”.

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve. This has been said.

These things are “true” and one can look at outcomes and experience and often find the belief that really spawned the problem or good fortune. This has been well documented and is covered by lots of expensive courses that you can sign up for in the sphere of positive thinking and the Law of Attraction. It seems apparent that the general theme of ones thoughts not only defines 

defines ones truth but also manifests in the physical world.

People believe in this or that and they key here is that this becomes their experience. Thereafter the belief is labelled as “true”: and they marvel at others who do not belief it and even wonder if these people are fools.

But I am asking people not to think and not to “auto-run” their beliefs and let them go.

I throw all beliefs into the big bag called “Thoughts”. But clearly this type of thought-a belief that is true is something more difficult to throw into the thought bag along with such thoughts as “A red cat is on the mat”. I suspect this is one of the seductive powers that thoughts and thinking has, because a thought manifests into truth.

But one must consider where the power of the thought is. It is not the stand alone thoughts “I have no self-confidence” and “You can see I don’t as I get nervous with people” and “This is true” – it is not the thoughts that have the power to manifest them – it must be clear the source is something else –probably a someone else. So if we can “change our minds”, make different beliefs after attending a The-Power- Is-You rally or something, then where is the blank space in which all these beliefs are held?

Surely this blank space where beliefs are written or manufactured is the source of them? And this blank canvas is you, the Real You and I ask that you look for Yourself and see if you can find any size or limit to who you really are. If you forget how to spell belief –is it ei or ie? - then simply remember that that it has “lie” in the middle –ha-ha. But don’t bother to label beliefs as lies…that’s just more thought! It’s funny though!

You might argue some beliefs are true for everyone-such as breathing the air to live or gravity. It could be our beliefs are the only reason we have breathing and have the pull of gravity – but that’s not my theme or concern at the moment. What I am addressing is that a belief labels the event and is an addition to what is already there. It’s a thought added to an object or event and is just another thing in one’s perception.

Statements or thought streams that follow “I am tired because I didn’t get enough sleep and I know when I don’t sleep enough the next day is a struggle” are additions to what is. Sitting here I do actually feel tired and it was because of the above but there is just the tiredness in the body, that’s all that is here but it is not that because “tiredness in the body” is a label for typing here – all there is, is what is here … including of course thoughts arising!

I am not battling with thoughts because they are wrong. I am watching them if they come no matter how true or believable they are. “I am nineteen”, “I am seventy two”, “I am female” … are you? If you look from this moment and see thoughts as perhaps “Wibble, wibble, wooo!”-Just things –you may find a timeless undefinable you beneath.

In these meditations you may find yourself face to face with a belief based or thinking based truth. This can be hard to look around. It takes courage to let these core beliefs go. But just look for the author of them and try to get comfortable with the idea that everything you hold as true is just a label you have placed on what you perceive.

You can play a trick on the mind to let everything go for just one minute. After that you can still be an atheist or a spiritual being on a path or needing to eat better in your life. In that minute just look around and ask yourself –who am I? And where am I?  I am not saying you are not an atheist or spiritual being nor hungry –you are!  But. That’s just playing out the reality we have and it’s playing out in a bigger One Thing -the One Thing that Everything is within and is – and that One Thing is you –who you really are.

The phenomenon of beliefs leads to experiences which manifest pursuant to the belief often described as The law of Attraction. Thus these thoughts with the added label "true" have special meaning and validate thought and thinking. Thus we like to think more! All this is the Human game I suppose and the Sport of Oneness or The "Play of Lila" (try Google) and is part of The Big Idea - Life.

Label all thoughts as “things to perceive”. Then start meditating and as they arise –don’t label them!!!

I keep saying this in different ways. Perhaps the most most simple basic condensed version of my methodology and entire book is:

“Stop thinking for about 30 seconds.”

Who am I meditation.

I was trying “Who am I?” as a mind consuming (thought blocking) mantra. I was based on an idea from something Alfred Lord Tennyson tried. He would repeat his name over and over and from I can tell blasted himself into oneness and bliss! I imagine he looked at the entire person including all his beliefs and saw them all as a fabrication, a construct sitting in the middle of a larger Self.

I only tried this to see if it works – Maybe you can? I am getting bored “trying to do this” because I am comfortable with Who I really Am and even dogged thoughts that demand my attention seem to give up after a while! I have become the saffron robed grinning fool at the airport who stands in front of a very large businessman who is very close to beating him to death!

I’ve heard of one that used “Me” (repeated) as a mantra. But be sure to realise the Real You is not a “Me” or “Real You” – you are what you are without being anything ("you are" and "being" , is the verb, to be). I have found no “being something” in the oneness. It’s as I have said, a sort of void or empty field of potentiality, that is full of stuff!

Dreaming the Dream

I suppose the whole point is that it’s not that there is only One Thing or oneness –the main idea is that there is Separation and Duality. The One Thing lives as the many. And the One Thing experiences Life and grows Life and the Reality and the whole world as we know it through the many, many things within It. God is The Creation. But the One Thing is not then many things after all –it also remains one thing- The One Thing. 

Dream a dream world of your own manufacture and imagine living as a person in the dream. Imagine dreaming this world and living as the person who you think you are with your life. You are the person and you are the dream.

“The Push”, “Going with the flow”- Enlightened creating.

“The Push”, “Going with the flow”- Enlightened creating.

 (new heading -can't make the text bigger at the moment -haha)

 I keep adding to this “book” but it’s just more stuff as I think of it. This way you can follow along as I have said. Its blog style –as I cannot see how this will not get more and more interesting with time and to stop research now and stay at the same point to edit and write a book that all nicely slots together seems foolish. (28^th Feb 2013)

NLP Neuro Linguistic Programming is excellent at reorganising the mind and indeed Dr Bandler who invented it is on the leading edge of really looking for answers. What he actually has established is the power the mind has –or rather the omnipotent power the mind has to change itself and the world around us with just a thought. I would ask “Who has this power?” “Who are you?” He addresses the power of creation and is in a place where most Enlightened Masters and Gurus hardly go, or hardly teach anyway - and certainly without Dr Bandler’s expertise. (I have watched maybe forty+ hours of him on video –repeatedly!). Master Eckhart Tolle, however, briefly makes mention of the dynamic aspects of oneness and “going with the flow” …I don’t think he calls it that- he asks to be “used”… with an efficacy that perhaps only an Enlightened Master can experience. I may be wrong about Master Eckhart Tolle, humblest apologies if so. But when is the last time your Guru suggested you might have the cars and houses you want –mostly they are for letting go –right? Using NLP techniques I have brought myself back from the brink many times and it did give me pause to wonder who I really was, given that who I thought I was could be changed so radically.

As for creating what we want there is only The One Thing doing that; so to try to create from the viewpoint of the personality is perhaps asking the rear passenger to drive- I hesitate to use the word “puppet” but the Big Idea of Life in Me, the Real Me might well only allow Big Idea Steps forward, which might explain why I (the puppet?) am poor and will never be rich, though daily witnessing complete Muppets (!) that have more money than they can count! The trick then to creating things in the world would be to align with the Big Idea, the Dynamic Tao which might well embrace some definitions of “going with the flow”.  For myself – I feel an agenda, thrust or direction within the Real Me that is to manifest via the mini-me and otherwise I feel a lot of past goals and ambitions were merely the minds general broadcast by “Radio Separation FM”.

  

"The Push" – more on the dynamic Tao

The more I drop into the Big Groovy Thing the more the world and my life seems peachy perfect and all is as it should be. Notice: that is not to say: that it all isn’t progressing –I feel it all is developing as it should also. As I feel no time in the Oneness I might more accurately say the “direction of the intention” or “direction of the push” is as it should be: The direction of the flow... The Push.

Feeling the dynamic nature of the Real Me is a most important (!) part of it. Sometimes we might be encouraged to try to grasp “Life is perfect” and “All is an Illusion” and other sound bites that the Zen Masters found themselves saying to try to communicate this simplest of concepts. But the present tense here “is” should not be trusted! There is no fixed state of now in The Now - all of time and no time are in The Now –that’s why I really prefer calling it Oneness or This. There is no fixed now in Oneness –see –much easier to digest!

I am getting into difficulty communicating here. The Oneness I find to be timeless because all of time is within it. All of time and possibility inside what is an infinite field of potential and possibility. For me I feel a direction in this slice of reality: a heading from “The Push”. Thus to say:

“Everything is as it should be”

... is nice, but it sounds static and unmoving and something in present time.

Perhaps better is:-

 “Everything including all of time is as it should be”. 

...What this carefully re-stated sentence  does, is account for life in linear time, future life in linear time in the game we play -and thus it includes the direction, the intention of Oneness..."The Push"

The classic western view of a world full of Zen Masters sitting on a prayer mats while the world goes to hell in a pile of uncollected garbage clearly is refuted at this point.

Enlightenment for some at least is an action packed adventure of doing stuff as aligned with the dynamic life-force. They are doing after all! This is something I completely missed last year as can be seen in my early blog postings.

The Push, the intention to move in a direction that is in oneness -may well push you and I. Oneness acting through us dynamically linear time moment to moment -how exciting is that? It adds a whole new dimension to life in the separation. We can start being God in bodies or Avatars.[manifestation of a deity in a body]

During meditation: don’t forget to look for or recognise “The Push” in “Who are you?”
In living in this reality: It is how I would explain “Going With The Flow”-you might start to feel it as you walk around!

 

Enlightened Creating - Creative thought – a type of thought

I’ve heard the Masters say the enlightened mind now functions in the way the mind is supposed to function. And they talk about creating things.

A creative thought is not a thought to throw into the trash! These are not the types of thought we have been watching with our unlabelling neutrality!

A creative thought is as you might guess. An idea that brings something new into the world.

Eg

Customer: “We were wondering if the sky-blue could go on the walls”

Painter, probably from East London! : “No problem Madam and that’s two cups of tea -  mine with one sugar and Fred doesn’t take sugar”

The sky-blue walls and the cups of tea are creative thought!

You may feel as I do that creative thought doesn’t really come from the mind as I have described it. I think creation can only come from One Place (!) and that is not the mind or the person we think we are –it is The Infinite Awareness Thingy –The Real You and The Real Me. Oneness.

Logically then we can recap with this line of “reasoning” (awareness of what is) and see that the Oneness is running the Whole Show and is the only driving force there is – even though, as I suggested early – even though it is filtered through our mind perhaps and also involves a method of allowing  -it still is Oneness that rules supreme.

You may have read:
"You are not driving the bus" [of your life]".
but this is horrible and I would rewrite it:-
"You are driving the bus but the driver is not your mind,ego or personality -who you may think you are".

So if you get a creative thought... during meditation –er –maybe stop meditating and do it –or write it down for later! It is a “good” sign though that you get them during our thought watching or just looking –it means you’re dropping into the One Thing – Right?  Again to repeat myself, I think the best artists and creators let their minds go blank as a method to let these creative thoughts flow more easily.

Why?

The best answer I have  heard is

“Why not?!”

What follows is my foolish account of the Genesis of Creation that is barely worth reading - I might delete it, because it didn’t happen in the past, did it? It is already happening now, in this moment.

You may find it useful.

...

There is nothing but you. Suddenly you get the idea that you are you.

Then you get the idea of making something maybe “Let there be light” and little do you imagine it eventually will include a nice comfortable chair and a cup of tea.

You find yourself alone and bored and invent a world and find you are experiencing loads of great stuff as you are actually all the separate parts. But everything is inside of you because there is no outside of you.

The world is pretty crude with a few cubes and triangles and stuff and time is just “a while” here and there as things are moved around.

Then you decide you can make people in the world that are conscious (aware of being aware). What you do is focus on a spot with the intention of where they are to be and they sort of emerge or grow into being there as a spiritual thingy. (I think the gods can also do this –regular people start new people by “having a baby” but I would imagine most babies are reincarnates)

To your amazement and delight these separate bits of the world make more and more groovy bits of the world and it keeps growing itself.

Then you have the idea of fooling yourself that you are one of the people, the players in the world you created. A player that has consciousness (aware of being aware). A player that thinks she is in the world and that the world outside of her, is not her. Actually you are experiencing all the players living this way. Interesting!

Certainly to have anything you want would be fun for maybe 100,000 years and then you might seek limitation. Thus: to be able to experience the life within many conscious beings (aware of being aware) in the world that thought they were in a separate reality and who all struggled to live somewhat, would be entertaining! And so it goes along with a large variety of experiences.

Unfortunately these beings that you are living as, soon discover they are made of God Herself (!) and really are one with God… Ah well –it was fun while it lasted –you blame The Buddha!!! – Next time no Buddhas! 

...so much for that!

Maybe this is the long term game: to see who can escape the maze.

I have heard it all described as hide and seek. The Godhead hides in the individual and seeks oneness. Maybe that’s why. But I prefer “Why Not?!” –this is my experience.

I wonder if the most astonishing experience is Love. Compassion and Love that forms in the world somehow from the participants as much as You the Creator. Certainly the wonder of aesthetics is up there in the top ten experiences with some glorious sun rises in the exaltation of Nature, but it is Love that shines brighter than any Sun.

I suppose once all the conscious beings get Self-realised it might be time to start again and do something else or another version of it. Having said that of course you can have all versions and updates and possibilities running at the same time to see what’s the most fun. Multiple Infinite Universes.

This sort of “more than infinite consciousness” above is available to you in meditation –it is who you really are Hang on to your hat because your brain might explode!

The answer to Why? is available to you in meditation, in The Now.

Having said that it all sounds like a history with time bouncing along boppetty bop. But there really is no time here as time is just an idea.

Imagine you are a Goddess or a God or something Mighty! Then imagine all of the physical world as we understand it; the whole universe sitting in your hand. Don’t forget that as you gaze upon it you are outside of time. So in your hand is our universe with all its time playing out within it.  With your eyes you can see any time in there you wish.

(Repeated).So the above foolish account of the Genesis of Creation is barely worth reading - I might delete it, because it didn’t happen in the past, did it? It is already happening now, in this moment.

This would be a good time to talk about time and see if you concur.

  

Time: About time!

Getting the hang of Zen sound bites like “time does not exist” has taken me some time! It’s a concept I have experienced for maybe 20 years so perhaps I can give you my ideas on it.

I must say that time does exist but it is a construction, a fabrication, something manufactured in the present moment because this moment is all there is.

This will not be understood alone by thinking about it. Thinking, as should be clear by now, is language based :”I am living in the present, the past is gone and the future is not here yet”.

 In addition to that we think this way also in our daily lives – because that’s what our daily lives are like -  getting to the shops (the present), glad that the journey was okay(the past) and not relishing the idea of the trip home (the future). 

Also there is that beast: memory! “I am sure I turned the oven off” etc

These three: language, daily life, and memory all conspire to make linear time, real. But it isn’t really there!

Kindly realise I am trying to make this point with language, one of the three conspirators –so this is a bit tricky! I might use weird English here.

The questions about time are slippery because there are these two points of view: the mini-me, that is late for work and the Real Me, that has within it a dream-reality consisting of matter, energy, space and …time.

Time is something manufactured: not inside who I think I am, but inside the Big Thing I have discovered I really am.

Time exists like the universe exists – as something made up!

Try to frequently return to this Big View as you ponder thus:-

Kindly consider this moment – (Consider The Now, “The Here” and “The This”).  In The Here And Now [T.H.A.N.!] there is no time anywhere visible. The past is Here only as memory and perhaps compelling evidence, which is only Here also. Any evidence of the past like a photograph or and old movie or a combination of memory and evidence like the alarm clock going off  because you set it eight hours ago –all these things are happening Here. There is only Here, in This, this moment.

You must concede there is only ever Here and This.  What else is there except  Here,  This,  Now?  Memory is happening in The Here. All physical objects are Here. All ideas about what physical objects, people etc, have done in the past or will do in the future, are …..Here.

The idea of time itself is also…..Here. Everything is Here!

Time does exist – but it is only a construct, a fabrication, an idea.

Memory:

Supposing last year you were travelling alone and met a stranger on a train and you did not learn his name. How do you know it happened? Your memory. Perhaps this man was tall, dark and handsome. I want you to put this event into your memory – perhaps slot it into a journey to work or a holiday somewhere or something –put it into your past. Get this so that you can see the train and the man and remember when it happened…. Now! What is the difference between the quality of that fake memory and your real ones? I said quality  -how it looks – not the validity or plausibility or knowing you made it up –but the resolution, the colours, the sounds, the features of the  man? Look at the man again –and the train –can you not now see features you had not thought of? It may get more and more real as your actual past. You may even get the thought –“Why was I on that train, it is something out of the 1930s?” The reason I know you can do this is because you dream and sometimes with such realism that waking is a real upset or blessed relief!

Rene Descartes thought about dreams and you don’t have to read his stuff to quickly see that he wondered if dreams seem so real, maybe all of life is a dream.

The mind has sets of videos in it. It has videos called memory and videos called imagination and neither are distinguishable one from the other ,except by the category in which we file them- memory(true) or imagination(false).

Clearly memories are automatically labelled or categorised as “true” –it is automatic –unless we were very intoxicated and we have to check with a friend!

By putting these together: all memory is only in this moment, and memory is just a video labelled “true”; we can begin to see that linear time is constructed in this moment , The Now, “The Here”,  “The This” .

Did it really happen? Did anything happen (in the past)? Does the past even exist?

It has been said that memory is just a creation to explain what is happening now.

You may begin to see memory and thus time is a construct, a creation. And that the constructor and creator is……you! – Who else is with you in The Now? It’s only you –just you.

To really see the fabrication of time we need to get into this moment or The Now or Here or This:-

Memory may be a neat entrance point into The Now.

Looking around wherever you are now look at the things there and spot the memories you have of them or the memory that is prompted or spawned by the object. See how the attached memories are something else to look at as well as the actual object itself.  Notice how memories are videos or thought-streams (whatever) labelled or categorised as “true” or “this really happened”.

See the object(1)  a picture on the wall. See the memory(2) “I bought that with Alice –what a crazy outfit she had on!” . See the true-label (3) “it’s true -it happened”

Look around: see 1.  object, 2. the memory, 3. the label “it happened-it’s true”

You will notice that all three, are things.  1.The object - is not you.   2.The memory is not you.   3.The label “it really happened” is not you.

Hence I hope that suddenly even for a just few moments(!)-  you might see yourself as outside of time, watching the idea of time as a thing, an idea constructed from a lot of various things that; are things and not you, yet you can see them within you..

Hopefully you will have this spooky moment where you see memory and time sort of collapse into Here and Now and This. When I do it – all of time seems to be an idea, and although time seems real enough, it still remains an idea in this moment.

Repeated:

The questions about time are slippery because there are these two points of view: the mini-me, that is late for work and the Real Me, that has within it a dream-reality consisting of matter, energy, space and …time.

Time is something manufactured: not inside who I think I am, but inside the Big Thing I have discovered I really am.

Time exists like the universe exists – as something made up!

Don’t just read my truth –what’s your truth? – have a look for yourself.

Changing the past –changing your past:

Well this is the next step I suppose. And a trick I have used more than once over the years.

I might add on a personal note –a lot of this stuff I have been doing for years. I called it “cheat-mode”. I can cheat the laws of physics and the agreed upon laws of all of reality –why I did not know –but I have always felt it within my power. I have always employed the method of switching my mind off as required –usually if I was doing a healing on someone or for some sort of spiritual thing like a course of study or hehe – an exorcism(!) or talking to my deceased grandfather(!) where my power was needed. But as I said with my depression ever present, keeping my mind turned off for weeks on end became impracticable without some deeper understanding.

Where was I? Oh yes…From the viewpoint of the Big Me, The Real Me I can see time and the past as an imaginary thing. When I think about it, thinking in the mind, rumble, whirr, rumble, rumble, it all gets confusing because the apparatus of the mind is really centred in the middle of a time related world. So to do this I have to stop thinking which nowadays I seem to be able to do on command. (Stare out the window - In this moment what is there to think about? - That sort of thing!)

Please Note:

Oh yessss. 

Don’t beat yourself up if you cannot understand all this –neither can I !!

By which I mean none of this will think through!!!

Dude! Girlfriend! You have to go there!

Erm –changing the past – right… The past is an idea in The Now –this I hope you have seen. Well, to change the idea about what happened changes the past then!

I experience limits with this as you can imagine –but there is still plenty of room for fun.

Imagine you were having a bad day and shouted at someone or said something…uncouth (heaven forbid).  I have established that this event despite the memories and overwhelming proof or compelling evidence is only and simply an idea in The Now. In this moment therefore, you can easily maintain this construct as actually having happened and have a crisis involving blame, shame and regret or you can de-construct it as not having happened. More specifically what I do is get the idea that it didn’t happen to me. I may be caught on film and I may still have to pay £500 costs (!) –but no matter  -It was not me!

That the rest of the world knows it was me that did the awful deed in the past is of no consequence; but now after doing all this enlightenment stuff I understand the mechanism. I have recently realised that….

I am the rest of the world!! That’s what they would say!!! Everyone is playing my

Separation Game, namely: reality is real, time is real, the past really happened, the future hasn’t happened, the world is “out there” and they are in it! Candles in the wind!

Look at the past –it is an idea Now. That is all it is.

Like I said if I think about it I don’t understand. The mind is not set up that way –though I wonder if it could be reconfigured. I never like “cannot” and “impossible” in sentences  -they never seem to fit, from: “It is impossible for the mind to think this concept of oneness – it cannot” –Hmmmmm I wonder.

[You can see I keep getting more and more ideas as I go along! That’s the only way I can do this –a spiritual evolution, blog-style.]

“It didn’t happen to me!” -- How does this help to deconstruct the past in this almost silly pretend way? It works in many ways. Firstly it puts me right in the middle of oneness –nice. Secondly it takes away the reason to have angst over past events hanging around in present time. Why bother? The more I look at the past from Now –the more it seems like it maybe happened and the more it looks like something being created in this moment to sort of justify where everyone is!

Don’t forget who you really are! Who are you? We have two points of view running along at the same time remember. The mini-me and the Real Me. By which I mean – I am trying to explain this- The Real You and Real Me- from Paloma to you as Jane Doe(USA)or Mr Smith(UK) only because I presume most of the time you are thinking as Jane or Smith (forgive me).

Time and Past trauma.

You may now agree that past trauma is also an idea in this moment. Time exists and it did happen from the point of view of the person –but by looking at time related thoughts maybe you can begin to see that time itself is only an idea now, in this moment. If you can see that time has a question mark hanging over it because it seems manufactured in The Now then maybe you can see past traumatic events in the same light. Thus the terrible event is here now should you look for it, but only as a constructed thing –a thing constructed by you! Who else is  here?

Once you see the construction you can decide whether or not it need upset you –which is also an idea!  Easy to say perhaps – but I do hope that if you have heavy past trauma impacting your present life, I sincerely wish that you can find some Peace and were it to be through this methodology, I would be entirely delighted.

 

Present trauma –living a miserable life?

I hated my job for years. It is something I do not want to do –yet it pays too much for too little time to discard. Lots of thoughts and emotions would zoom around when I think about it. Until recently! My mind is settling down.

I started the book with this:

“If only we could just enjoy ourselves a little more in what we do – can this be achieved? To have the exact same circumstances in one’s life and yet have more fun enjoyment and inner Peace – is this possible? The kids are the same, the house is the same, the “old fella” is the same, the life is the same -but with an added “I feel fab”. Is this do-able?”

The beauty of Enlightenment – ha-ha - is the foundation of the method I have used. I am not trying to fix my issues or problems because the premise is that the Real Me beneath them is Peace and Tranquillity itself: thus mental concerns are to be merely viewed for them to dissolve and indeed often they need not be viewed to vanish – this is my experience.

Whereas. In the sphere of mental health, self-help , spiritual practice and religious practice one is fixing mental problems: this is a sweeping generality perhaps but changing the way I think towards a greater happiness has always been a voiced  or implied guarantee by the provider in any “uplifting endeavour”. Clearly religion does move beyond thought and also many  encourage revised actions as more important than revised thinking but mostly it’s about changing the thinking first as a prerequisite.

In Awakening and Enlightenment we are not thinking, we have moved beyond thought and recognise thought as what it is.

Note:

Awakening has been described as getting a good idea about who you really are.

 Enlightenment, the certainty of it.

All this means that we are almost taking away the thoughts that have bothered us. It really does feel like a subtraction of thought and recovery of Peace. Thus to take thoughts away from one’s life doesn’t require changing one’s life. The life can be the same and yet we have recovered mental health…

”The kids are the same, the house is the same, the “old fella” is the same, the life is the same -but with an added “I feel fab”. Is this do-able?”  - my hope, as expressed at the outset.

Clearly it is doable – I have done it and so have a lot of others!

I might add, “Eureka!” which I think is Greek or Ancient Greek for “I have found it!”.

In the parlance of our time “Whooopeeeee”.

 He-he

My mental health 3^rd March 2013 !!!

I started this Quest in 2011, pursued it casually at first and then with ever increasing commitment in 2012 and 2013 as it became clear it was working.

If you can, imagine the mind of someone that is almost permanently in a state of despair, that rarely smiles and who does not commit suicide only because they know it will upset others –then that was how I started. When asked , I described my life as “a joyless existence”.

March 2013. I know I am Peace. I am the blank canvas that the mind is written upon and the mind is not me. I have watched so many issues and problems just float by with a new non-attachment. There is hardly anything that “bites” in the mind these days. I often find myself staring into the world and marvel at the wonder of it all. Today I was looking deeply at a dirty old fence and it looked sharp and interesting! Quite often I do not think of anything. But sometimes pieces of the mind do trouble my Tranquillity but only for maybe a minute or two while I separate out from them and begin the method described and watch them.

Not bad progress in three years!

Amazing progress for maybe a hundred hours of meditation, forty hours of research, ten hours further solidifying the method in the counselling of others and another fifty hours or of “spiritual evolution”, by writing this book.

Not bad –not bad at all!

Everything else has failed –this has worked!!!

I took a man (Ooooo Matron) “from his spiritual path” to a state of Peace in less than three hours this way. It will not take you three years!

Watch everything you can by Gangaji, Papaji and Dolano on Youtube – there are others but these have the most stuff on there and you can follow their thread. Yet do as you wish. But watch out for belief systems and thoughts that they hold as true- as I have said: to help get people to understand; they have to say so much, to describe so little, in a language not designed for it, that sometimes things can be taken the wrong way . One must consider everything an author or Master or Guru writes and says before foolishly rushing off with a sound bite!

Then come back to this methodology and the steps I set down in the middle of the book.

I did all of this alone. There was no Guru or Master except for the above.

I am my own Guru –I use the Real Me!  - Arrogance is Bliss

God in a frog! The Duality –Opposites together

I am sure there is a school of thought (!) that maintains that God or the Infinite Awareness has lost Himself in the dream –He (!), It, has become all the bits It created within Itself and as such has sort of stopped being The One Thing to that extent. Thus “God in a frog” is just a frog being a frog!

Another idea that’s popular is that oneness is experiencing itself in different forms or parts such as you, me, trees, cats and frogs etc.

Then there is the added thing that people that have Awakened (seen the oneness) and those that are Enlightened (attained certainty of it) are perhaps being oneness after all!

One aspect then, seems to me that frogs and Enlightened Masters are just being frogs and Enlightened Masters because each still has that viewpoint – view from their location. A frog is sitting on a lily pad somewhere, Gangaji is probably doing some ironing and Dolano maybe is having a twenty minute nap after lunch! Oneness, the Infinite Creator of The Dream seems perhaps nowhere to be seen as The One Thing.

Everything and every person have their viewpoint –what they are looking at: meanwhile the One Thing, Infinite Awareness seems to have lost Itself in them all.

Or has It?

What follows is my experience of how I feel this all fits together:-

I want to introduce the concept of bringing two opposites together here in a logically impossible way.

Let me acquaint you with the opposites- together concept by examples.

Suppose I am waiting at a specific location  and it plays out that I am not “meant” to see someone at that time, perhaps because of a belief system I have (beliefs seem to make my world –Law of Attraction ,whatever). Then suppose someone else for similar reasons has to be where I am at the same time. Then it is entirely possible that we can both be in the same location at the same time and yet for each of us the other was not there!

Another example:-

A God, one of the Gods can put an idea in your mind. It will however be your idea and you will be the sole creator of it –you can check with the Akashic record or deep within and it is definitely you that originated the idea and that fact is a Universal Truth of the Highest Type –but the God thought of it!

I am demonstrating here the general concept of two logically impossibly simultaneous scenarios occurring at the same time. You can invent your own. You can live your own –he-he! At the same time and place; traffic lights can be red and green, the number 58 bus can be both late and early and a coin can flip both a head and a tail, depending on who is looking at it.

Tying this all together then:-

So it is with “God in a frog”.

The frog is just a frog –nothing more, nothing less and people are just people, and even Enlightened Masters though Self-Aware(The Real Them-Aware) only have their point of view and all these daily lives chug along as we observe –that’s it, the One Thing or Infinite Intelligence or God or oneness is nowhere involved with any of it, and does not experience different aspects of itself through these things at all, oneness or God is lost in Creation and Life plays out ……but…….. The One Thing, Infinite Awareness, oneness, God, is experiencing and being it all!!

Two opposites together: a frog is just a frog without any God in it anywhere –yet God is within it and living as it.

Don’t be alarmed - in oneness, The One Thing- just one thing - all opposites must be together –it’s logical! Ha-ha.

This is why time exists and doesn’t exist.

This is why we command our lives completely –because we do –no question –this is The Truth ……yet…. we are puppets with the strings held in the Hands of The Divine Puppeteer. – ha-ha.

The world is not an illusion it is real as you well know and so is time – time is real, it’s evident in our daily lives and in history books and archaeology and everywhere ……but….. it is all an illusion and just a fabrication –all made up, and all of time and Everything is only here in this moment.

This is the Duality - Opposites together.

So don’t look for The Truth because The Truth is True – and probably so is it’s opposite!

Jump out of thinking and it all becomes comically clear –and the clarity you have may not be at all as I see it –but we would both be correct wouldn’t we? Because to jump out of thinking is to be The One Thing –and the way the One Thing sees it, is the way it is - even thought that may be many ways – he-he.

I suppose the bottom line here is that I consider nothing to be impossible: I don’t see how "impossibility" fits with The Infinite Creator.

Play around with the idea of opposites together with this –it may  help stop the brain from exploding… We are separate, individual, co-creators creating the world and yet we are all one. – does that seem easier to swallow now?

The way you see the world is the way the world is –because you are The Infinite Awareness, the Big Cheese and this is true Absolutely – and the way you reckon other people are and I am, is True……but…..he-he –The way everyone else pictures the world is  Absolutely True also –Opposites and Impossible co-existences together.

We live in the Separation. Reality is real. Time is real. …Yet… there is only Oneness and all of reality is an illusion and not real, and time does not exist as there is only this moment. Shuffling these two together now in the mind should be easier for you.

Whatever The Truth is, you will not read it here – but I hope I have shown you where to look for it.

Why the Peace I describe is what you really might be looking for.

Because the book is written blog-style I will expand on something from the beginning of the book. In a normal book it would have been moved there for logic compartmentalising of subjects but here you have the advantage of following what I have done  -spiralling through the subject getting deeper and deeper.

Near the beginning of the book I said:-

“Ask any go-getter entrepreneur what they’re really shooting for and the answer might well be “Peace” or “peace of mind” or “tranquillity” and that’s the reason they’re busting their buns working eight days a weeks to get all that money and financial security and creating a greater or lesser empire: their quest for Peace.”

And apparently, this is a direct quote from the Buddha (!):-

“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”

I met a man yesterday who described himself as a “Buddhist”- not a very learn-ed Buddhist I might hasten to add. I know Buddhism is quite varied in its beliefs and practices and as you can imagine I wasn’t too interested in which branch he followed but what his thoughts were –the thoughts that defined his world and the thoughts he thought defined him. But it was apparent he was still looking outside himself for happiness and a sense of accomplishment. The conversation was in a café where everyone pitched in and all that was accomplished was provoking more thought in the Buddhist –damn! –ha-ha.  I need to get someone one-on one to crack them –muhahahaha.

Looking to the world i.e. financial security, surrounding oneself in pleasant vistas like the sun setting over the Himalayas and attractive loving partners etc. can perhaps be seen reasonably easily as probably  not an answer to happiness: this is seeking “Peace from without”(from the above Buddha quote)

Seeking Peace in the mind through the pursuit of happiness or using a wanted financial situation etc. to cause happiness is chasing happy thoughts and Peaceful thoughts.

But all thought is sort of without - not the Real Me –this is my experience.

So why look there?

I can almost provide an intellectual understanding of this as follows:-

Clearly the western world is built on the assumption that the more wanted things one has and the more dreams that come true and the more goals accomplished and the more desirable situations experienced …the more peace of mind is achieved. This is true if you believe it but seems somehow, not to work as a final solution as the happiness of achievement is not lasting and a continuous successful timeline of success must be established. The singer must have more smash hits, the artist more master pieces and the multi-millionaires must become the multi-billionaires; lest they all feel unhappy!

Imagine being unconcerned whether you are rich or poor or any external circumstance even whether you live or die. Imagine that were you to do this or attain it you did not feel apathetic and near death but to your surprise experienced some of the “Ecstasy and Bliss” you may have read about and the Peace I describe.

The mind, the world of thought is built on opposites –this may be why.

To experience happiness there must be pain and suffering. I have met people that have had lucky and easy lives and they seem to experience a shallow set of emotions. The man that has seen great suffering may cry with joy at the sight of a flower. A few years ago I looked at the sky and cried with the wonder of it. The mind is set up in opposites: I think happiness needs a benchmark of its opposite and the less happiness one experiences the greater happiness one can find and vice versa.

Thus to look for Peace in the mind is to chase ones tail and do what you have been doing –go round and round and round in the mind.

I have looked for Peace via the world “out there” to engender Peace in my mind with “epic fail” and achieved utter, utter despair! Done that –got the T shirt - Got the DVD as well actually!

If you want happiness from the world, it could well be that the only way to do it is to sort out a continuous line of success. This can be accomplished using the methods and principles of The Law of Attraction and Visualisation and Affirmation to bend the world to follow your thoughts. You will eventually become a God where the world follows your imperative, your command –“ I will double my business by July”, ”I will attract to me a loving ideal spouse” “my health is always perfect” and eventually, with practice and belief in oneself “I will never die”. The extrapolation of this is being able to have anything in the world you desire – and I put it to you that at that point, after 100,000 years or less, your happiness will vanish! Business will boom despite any recession, trains will always be on time, friends always perfect or as one wishes and the one thousandth lottery win may not have the joy in it that the first did! How long would a continuous string of sexual conquest give pleasure? I have posed this question before and the men seem to think about 200,000 years –ha-ha.

I have experienced being a God –I can still do a few tricks – it’s  just another game and the state of mind one has doing it varies and the some of the varieties can be extremely uncomfortable as I have experienced.

You have probably done this also in past lives or for moments in this life– and have chosen to limit your power again to have more of a game to play –who knows. Whatever.  Apparently with “Yoga” one can have an immortal body and examples (“immortals”) are hidden in the East –it wouldn’t surprise me. Are they happy?

But this is all words –why not risk losing a few hours of your life (!) and follow my method and see if it works for you? Look through your list of “Buddha Quotes” from a book or lifted off the internet somewhere and see if you can find much that he said that does not agree with what I have said! Dare I say it? – We think it’s a good idea. Ha-ha.

Once you have a Self-realised mind you can still play the game here and play it as a god if you wish by working the beliefs you have about what you can do. But you will know who you really are – and life will be like a chess game, and of little importance, and played with non-attachment and you will be at Peace.

Beware everything I have written especially that in italics-back to the method.

My book may be wise or foolish or badly written or communicate well –you might have a lot of ideas about it and who I am.

But returning to the method – if we example this from the last section:-

“Once you have a Self-realised mind you can still play the game here and play it as a god if you wish by working the beliefs you have about what you can do. But you will know who you really are – and life will be like a chess game, and of little importance, and played with non-attachment and you will be at Peace.”

Is this a thought?

It is isn’t it!

The things I have written are just signposts to what I am pointing at – as I have said. Do not swallow them as Truth!!

But there must be something I can write here that has The Truth in it? And I pondered!

My best answer lies in the very last line of the book which you can read shortly. The book is a message and messages need not have truth in them to direct us to what the message wants us to look at. If I say to you “You must walk everywhere and never get in a car” then you immediately look for your own truth and that message perhaps has fulfilled my purpose albeit in an area I am not discussing: I want you to find your own truth!

The book is a message and has no truth in it. Or maybe it does. It doesn’t matter. Take the message and find your own truth.

The message contains thoughts and ideas which we know from my methodology are to be discounted:-

Is this a thought?

Is the book a collection of  thoughts?

Have you labelled some thoughts in it as “true” and some as “false” and others as “interesting”?

Are “true”, “false” and “interesting” , all thoughts?

The thoughts do not define you.

Is that a thought?!

Who are you?

I have found staying with the method I describe: seeing who I really am more and more, and watching thoughts and emotions as they arise in meditation and in daily life and their attempt to cage or define me, has provided a deep Peace.

Cages, first mention in the above paragraph: –thoughts perhaps make cages –I could write about this and discuss the person that I thought I was versus who I really am –but I think I have written enough on this point. You get the idea by now I hope.

Daily Practise –meditate on the run!

Yes – use this method for the day to day thoughts arising. I could add that. You chat with someone and wonder if they liked you, or if you were too forthright or something and it starts to bounce around in the mind. Just watch the process in the mind from who you really are, from the empty space in which the thoughts occur. And the thoughts, and mental anguish drift away and there is Peace.

You only have to pause the activity to do this – you don’t have to switch off the phone and prepare the incense and sit in the lotus position –just watch the mental processes while you have a moment, anywhere, anytime.

I have found the more certain of, and familiar with, who I really am, the faster this Peace “returns”. But it is only the mind that settles down –the sun is always shining –the Peace does not return as such because it is always there in the background - I am Peace.

Sometimes I get a stressed thought process that doesn’t blissfully “drift away”. But these are rare. So I just try to watch the set up in the mind with greater vigilance and perhaps determination. And if that doesn’t work I resign myself to it –“surrender” the spiritual community calls it. I “go with the flow”, safe in the knowledge that these things are just there maybe for a greater purpose, a purpose from the Big Idea – Let there be Life - or maybe for “Why not?!” or whatever- it’s not important to work out a thought packed understanding! –but the sun is always shining. I am Peace.

The same applies for unexpected good luck or misfortune. Watch the labels and watch the thoughts arising.

Repeated from earlier:-

“We live in the Separation. Reality is real. Time is real. …Yet… there is only Oneness and all of reality is an illusion and not real and time does not exist as there is only this moment. Shuffling these two together now in the mind should be easier for you.”

I, Me, Myself

Who are you?

I hope you have Awakened to see who you really are or perhaps get a good understanding of it.

I feel I am the blank timeless thing behind my thoughts and the mind.

The mind plays out and I watch the thoughts.

Eventually the thoughts become something without any real meaning. Like the overhead conversation between two eleven year old children –it’s interesting perhaps, and you listen somewhat, but you know it is unlikely to contain anything in it of value.

Then we see we are just the Infinite Thing in the background.

What is vital , vital, is that every time you refer to yourself as “I” or “me” or read about “you” that you remember who you really are!!!

You might read “what you resist persists” or “your attachment chases things away”. Or even:-

“[Your] Desire is suffering”

But pleeeeese, do not forget who you are! Every instance you read about “you” or it is implied, or you infer it , in your Zen books or hear “you” in an Enlightenment lecture or conversation you might do worse than replace “you”, with “my mind”.

That way you will not go around and around and around in the mind like I have done in the past.

Redefine the words - I, Me, Myself- in your thinking (!) to “my mind” or “the person I thought I was” or “the person my mind is trying to define me as”.

Again in subjects studied or in conversation, people that want to discuss “you” really are talking about the above:  “my mind” or “the person I thought I was” or “the person my mind is trying to define me as”. Mostly they are calling “you” the person they think you are!

“How are you today?”

“You can be your Higher Self”

Sometimes I, me, myself, and you is valid in the day to day things and represents practicalities such as:-

“Are you going to the party?”

But just watch out for “you”. You are the Real You and not the person people may think you are, or the person you thought you were, and definitely  NOT the person with all those problems, predispositions, worries, and things to learn!

Your mind can learn understanding and ways to relax –but I think you may discover there is nothing for You, the Real You to learn - things to experience maybe –but nothing to learn…(?) – okay?

I am not saying stuff you read is bad or even incorrect.

Considering for example, [your] resistance and “[your] desire is suffering” -  resistance and desires for outcomes, unwanted and wanted changes to your life or the world. These things are thoughts! Meet them, watch them and see what happens.

I know desire and resistance seem like intentions or will and this you may experience –but take all the thoughts away and see what remains.

For Me, the Real Me desire and resistance dwells in the mind – The real me cannot think of anything I want or don’t want.

….well pursuant to “Let there be Life”, The Big Idea - there are some things I sort of want but I discussed that earlier and these things do not reside in the mind.

Ideas presented about “you” or “yourself” are normally what? The person people think you are. Your mind.

Do yourself (your mind) a favour –don’t mix up you and You. It’s a habit maybe – that’s all. Be aware of it – see how this fits in with what you read in the future.

I suspect the two Yous, you and The Real You, may mix up sometimes in what people are saying or writing –be readily to disentangle it all.

Oh yes –“The self” is another one –which self- self or Self - are people discussing?

You get the idea – where this goes is up to you and your researches –but start off on the correct line by not mixing up “you” with “You”.

Arrogance is Bliss – have a read or re-read through your books; some of the works of respected well known, well published, famous and wealthy authors in the realm of spirituality -  notice how a few of them have not figured out who they are!  You can also see them on Youtube and on the telly !

Every time they say “you” or imply “you” or you infer “you” (it might apply to you)an alarm bell should sound in your mind and the sentence or construct viewed most, most carefully – it may be harmless (!) but check it.

Desire is suffering - is a good example where people infer something the Buddha probably didn’t mean (to imply).

It does not mean:

“Your desire is your suffering” unless you define yourself with the mind. You are Peace and though you contain all the desires in the world that everyone has –You, the Real You has no desire.

It means:

[The mind’s] desire is [the mind’s] suffering –doesn’t it?

But to many Buddhists it means “my desire is my suffering - so I must stop desire and even the desire to stop desiring”(another thought) which sounds a bit difficult when you don’t know who you are! To simplify this; thoughts that have meaning or are assigned meaning, such as this, generate more thoughts and thus a new definition of who-we-think-are forms in the mind. This becomes more rattling around in the mind and you have tried it!

Have I confused you? These are just more thoughts that I have written - and have in themselves no importance

…. Stay with the method: –

.Who are you? –you are the blank slate upon which the mind is written.

.Confused? Maybe “I am confused” - - Is that a thought?

.“Desire is suffering” –Is that a thought?

.“My desire is my suffering so I must stop desire and even the desire to stop desiring” – Is that a thought?

.View them all with indifference!

.You are Peace.

The task would appear to be to get the mind to chill out a little –this is my experience! And you might accomplish that many ways – I did it my way (!) as described here in the methodology I propose. One step at a time – try getting fully Awakened and Enlightened , and later on figure out all the answers to everything !

Chronic thoughts that will not go away or seem to regenerate

( 11^th march 2013 )

I said this earlier:-

“Sometimes I get a stressed thought process that doesn’t blissfully “drift away”. But these are rare. So I just try to watch the set up in the mind with greater vigilance and perhaps determination. And if that doesn’t work I resign myself to it –“surrender” the spiritual community calls it. I “go with the flow”, safe in the knowledge that these things are just there maybe for a greater purpose, a purpose from the Big Idea – Let there be Life - or maybe for “Why not?!” or whatever- it’s not important to work out a thought packed understanding! –but the sun is always shining. I am Peace.”

But since then something wonderful happened:-

The reasons one can find for a continuous stream of thought can be amazingly varied: Angels, Demons and possession. And all of these can be true. And false –it depends on the person. People have this infinite power as you may have realised or know. 

“This is within my power (something I can do)” might be an absolute truth.

I have had re-spawning thoughts regarding my job for years and I have struggled. The mind has struggled –and there have been tears.

With the methodology here, watching thoughts, and finding the Real Me much mind stuff has trailed off, but not these returning thoughts.

I began to wonder if there were “lesser beings” or Demons somehow embedded into “me”(?) somewhere as an explanation. But this didn’t feel quite right especially as I have done stuff before that “handled” little body based beings and felt like I was pretending : the cause may have been incorrectly labelled but the eradication of the effects were spectacular –this was yearrrrrrs ago.

Labels –did I say labels? And labelling things as “cause”.?? Whoops!

I stuck with my method and the next “Who are you?” gave:-

 “I am The Cause, The Creator of Everything”, “I am Everything –really does mean I am Everything” . Everything is within me – I am The One Thing”….which is what I have been saying – but this time it just became a deeper conviction … Knowledge.

But this has to do with Creating The World –The Whole World. A Quantum Physicist might say “ The world is my hologram”, “The world –the entire hologram is made by me”. “You are creating everything and everyone you see including the walls and the carpet”.

It just yet another shocking realisation for the who-I-thought-I-was.

At this point the whispering demons stopped. The chronic re-spawning thoughts that always seemed to return and regenerate to bother me (my mind) faded.

The method remained valid throughout after all –no unusual steps were needed!

Watching thought and asking Who am I? spirals forward to greater and greater Understanding and Peace.

Thoughts formerly regarded as important or of significance become viewed with indifference – and thus they fade away.

Re-occuring thoughts, though repeatedly watched, that retain their meaning and importance, eventually succumb to the method as deeper and deeper I go into the Real Me.

Meanwhile I am newly at Peace at work – hooray! This is something not achieved through any religion, course, book, or spiritual practice. Hooray – Yesss Indeedy!

The Method – boiled down to its condensed essence.

The Method, condensed:

1.     Watch thoughts and the mental labels we assign to objects and events.

2.     Ask “Is that a thought?” if the thinking gets confused, important or meaningful or true (the truth) and if persistently so –just stick with it.

3.     Ask “Who am I?” –and have a look.

4.     Go back to 1.

With regards to thought - are you the blank slate upon which the mind is written?

With regards to who you really are – find your own truth (it will not be a thought nor will it translate well into thought).

As the meanings of thoughts subside more and more, thought is regarded with more and more indifference . And the Knowledge of the Real Me or perhaps “Entire Vista” of the Real Me becomes deeper and deeper - and Peace comes.

………………………………………

Indifference to thought – I like that –it describes the method well.

Indifference to thought -nice!

And then I was surrounded by a malaise

And then I was surrounded by a malaise that I could not fathom or resolve with the method as it seemed so deep. I felt a sudden blanketing gloom of emotion that I feared was the method failing and a return to my old depressed self. It seemed everywhere and contained the darkest thoughts of woe. But I did not become lost in it but somehow retained the determination to work it through.

So I got home and listened to Gangaji again –I have her “Diamond In Your Pocket –audio book. In Disc 5 “No End to Opening” she says [paraphrased] that once one’s own story (the story we tell ourselves about our life) is faced , one can face the world story and the story of horror and evil and how we are in the midst of it all with no escape..

And I looked at the world and found this had been my sudden malaise, these had been my thoughts of despair –not really for myself but for the catalogue of human suffering.

As I had just recently walked back home in a typical town in England and I  replayed the journey in my mind and considered the plight of the world. My eyes did not alight on the picturesque skyline but saw the anxiety and suffering in the eyes of people. As I lowered my gaze to the ground I saw the odd piece of litter swirling in the wind, a few discarded cigarette ends and the mud and dirt and grime of the City street. As I walked there was no glorious sunset only a grey cloudless sky and the March cold crept through my shoes and chilled my feet. I felt trapped here. I am an immortal and have experienced many existances but here I am in an enforced reality with no escape. . My face too, like those I saw was pressed into the mud and I too was forced to smell the stink of it all: the wars, the crooked politicians, the cruel, cruel injustices that humanity is capable of and worst of all the suffering endured by not only my family, friends acquaintances but also by the innocent strangers by the countless thousand, throughout history that had finally succumbed after some pitiful pointless struggle.

I looked at the world and I wept.

Slowly I returned from it all and I started to see these new thoughts about the world, as thoughts– thoughts that I considered only rarely during my selfish years of depression - thoughts that could be met and greeted and watched using my method. And I met them and sat with them for some time and watched the blanket of emotion that surrounded me. I met with the worst of the world, the worst of humanity and I met with my plight here stuck in the middle of it all.

I only ever wanted to make the world a better place and I have failed despite all my crazy metaphysical abilities and experiences that even from the alias Paloma Porta I hesitate to mention here lest you discard everything I have written as more fiction. I considered the joke my life has become as regards doing any good for any one. All these thoughts were welcomed, met and observed. I watched the thoughts of my entrapment here and my tiny silly life that has only a few moments of use for others in it and this stupid arrogant book that will never be read by more than a couple friends. All these thoughts were accommodated and watched.

I stuck to the method I have outlined. I did not try to sooth the thoughts or fix them. I did not try to get comfortable with “my plight here in my tiny life” or anything – I just watched the thoughts and emotions.

It didn’t take long, maybe twenty minutes, and I looked at the world and the malaise had lifted and I felt more at Peace. But I still had thoughts and continued the method on these for another hour or so until my vision became very sharp and I felt a powerful sense of Peace.  Nice.

To be honest, I know who I am, and Enlightenment is just the mind getting comfortable with it all.  I, the Real Me is no different now than before I was surrounded by gloom some 3 hours earlier or even when I was depressed in the years before. It’s just that little piece of the One Thing that had pretended to be separate has now sort of re-joined. But there are still thoughts and questions, and these relate to who I am as the mini-me the identity because, that I should be aware of all these strange things my whole life and see others as vastly different, I wonder what type of identity I am: there are rocks, plants, animals, humans and shamans and angels and gods and all sorts in the world – I wonder where on this level, which group of the spectrum I fall into.

Master Eckhart Tolle himself says, if memory serves, that after Enlightenment he created the identity of a teacher. So having an identity can come before and after!

Meanwhile I feel either more than Enlightened or less than Enlightened –but not Enlightened! I will continue the method and see what happens.

Finding Peace and Coming Home

I awoke this morning [19^th March 2013] with a great sense of Peace and I feel I have come home.

Before I slept I was reading some Osho quotes – I think they were Osho – the book is called “Yoda Sutras” which I downloaded for free from Amazon during my customary free books hunt! I usually get about 20 or so free Zen books or Buddhist books or whatever at a time. So last night’s bedtime reading was Yoda [Star Wars movie character] reading Osho….I think –who cares – they were pretty cool .

The story so far:-

I was sad.

I have watched thoughts.

I saw the Real Me and was very surprised with who I really was.

I felt a bit better.

The thoughts and questions flooded in and I watched them.

I felt I was finding Peace and that I am Peace.

I felt – I am Everything.

Then emotions and thoughts came in very strong and not in a good way.

And I watched them.

I began to see fear and the courage required to conquer fear as a silliness.

Everything seemed inside of Me –The Real Me.

The World, The Universe all appeared as My Dream.

Everything – my dream

And all thoughts and questions were just part of the dream.

What question can you have about your own dream?

But there is one question you can ask yourself, and that is:-

Who are you?

Perhaps use my method of negation – Are you a thought? Are you an emotion? Are you a belief?  Is “truth” just another thought? Are you something you hold as true in the mind? Are you really how you define yourself with your deepest core belief that you know is true? Does any thought including desires, worries, beliefs, memory and all that stuff – does any thought define you?

 …Or are these things just thoughts and simply within you? Then knowing what you are not – you might consider who or what you are.

Where is the physical world?  - Is this not also within you?

Where is time? -  Is not time within you?

And the questions in the mind – isn’t their answer simply “Why Not?!” and “Is that just another thought?”

And the Real Answer is not a thought, is it? The Real Answer is “Everything”.

Currently I feel great Peace and feel Everything is My Dream. But I am smart enough to know this is just a thought. It’s a peaceful mind –but I don’t think it’s an enlightened mind. But as I said – the sun is always shining – the Real Me hides behind a few last clouds – a few last thoughts. Maybe this is enlightenment – I have felt who I thought I was steadily dissolving and have many times sort of waved goodbye to that person (while meditating in the method I have outlined).

I continue with my method of watching thought and investigating deeper into :-Who am I?

I have found other strategies on YouTube from the Masters and Adyashanti (Steven Gray, born 1962-) has some groovy videos on there – but they key is not to think it over but to meditate!( I feel sure Adyashanti would agree). There is the idea that after an awakening experience one might find oneself with a choice of living as the identity or getting into the oneness – so choose the oneness. There is the idea of letting go. Not trying to fix things. No resistance. And so forth. Lots of advice is available.

But I have found my methodology is the best for me and I always return to it. Otherwise I just finding myself wishing I didn’t think the way the masters tell me not to think!

Arrogance is Bliss –Paloma’s method is workable and will get you there!!! –ha-ha.

Is that a thought?

Who am I?

Resuming The Quest Notes after a two month break.

27th March2013

I had a break in the writing. I have been staring at the pc for two months, yet daily I felt there was nothing to add.

Vital! Vital….Don’t forget who you are! [21^st March 2013]

[Proof reading  - This repeats what has been written earlier perhaps but it is vital]

I was reading a Zen type book written by someone who clearly is enlightened because I was experiencing a very high stress situation at work and was suffering! Foolishly I turned to a Master’s book for help instead of following my method!!

Arrogance is Bliss!
Let me show you how this Master’s wise words though informative and true - did not help! Here is the quote:-

“Along with the raw sensations and random thoughts filling the moment, is often an internal reaction to whatever we are experiencing. Most of the time, we are internally busy with a rejection of or attempt to manage the experience we're having. This internal activity is effortful and involves a tensing and pushing against something we're experiencing either externally or internally. This internal efforting is the true source of all our pain and suffering. This is good news, since it means that no experience or sensation by itself can cause us to suffer. We have to resist it or struggle with it for it to become painful. If we simply allow ourselves to be fully aware of the experience or sensation we are having without struggling against it, the suffering or pain is gone”.[my italics highlight].”

So I read this "expert's" book as a self help process to help with my recent stress and thought about it and thought thoughts like “I must be aware of my thoughts and this suffering and it will go – I must allow it to be”…but it all just got worse and worse.

So I turned back to my methodology before I got too lost in a sea of emotion and confusion.

Having calmed down I realised the crucial error in the above excerpt.

We are being asked to look from the wrong “me” !!! The Master is already in the oneness and is talking from there –but we (mostly) are not and are swimming around in a mind-created me…These are ..er…totally different versions of “me” –gasp! To say the least!

To look at any thought process or set of emotions or suffering from the person the mind is telling us we are leads to a “no result”. And it just promulgates more thought!

If you “go into the oneness”…and be the best version of the Real You that you can and even if you just imagine yourself- not as the mind says- but as a blank space or clean slate in which the mind is found and be the best version of Peace you can experience – then and only then will you be in a position to follow what the above Master’s quote is suggesting.

 To be the “mini-me” or person the mind creates as the “I” in all these thoughts is to get totally nowhere – and leads to more thought, more emotion and more suffering with confusion thrown in as well! - this is my experience in this.

Here is an example:-

You find yourself suffering because a new possession is found to be broken.

You know how the arguments go from here I bet – your desire is to blame, you are not allowing the suffering and you have not “let go” –Right? …But as you confront the suffering even with courage and fully view it – it may even then just get worse. The desire to fix the problem remains, you cannot seem to allow it all and neither can you let go of the idea of the broken possession.

So what is wrong here? Why has all this good information failed you?

Clearly it is because we are watching thought and emotions and suffering in, as or from the wrong me!
Don't be the wrong me!

You gotta be the Real Me !!!!

Now when we look from Peace. Peeeeeaaaaace. The Real Me. We look from the background emptiness that is full of life –or whatever you want to call it…Whatever “I am That” is  -look from there.  Suddenly the suffering is totally different!

There is nothing to touch the Big Me, is there? –it is all totally groooovy in there!

Suddenly the suffering is something occurring in the Big Me that you can watch with increasing indifference. Then it does what it does when you watch it. It all may seem like a construction and irreverent or become funny or it may dissolve or whatever. The whole broken possession thing is observed with a Peaceful neutrality and the emotions and thoughts are viewed with indifference and as what they are –a construct in oneness.

Never ever look at unwanted thoughts (!)_ emotions or suffering from the mini-me person that you thought you were but have gone to all this trouble to discover that you are not!

Always. Always. Always.Be the Real You –or whatever you are or do, or are not and don’t do!! - when you “go there”.

So this is vital when reading the works of the Enlightened few – don’t mix up the “me”s and “you”s and “we”s !!!

That is why method worked for me –because I would periodically ask “Who am I? What am I? and as the experience of oneness deepened so thoughts and suffering subsided quicker and quicker and so it spiraled around so oneness deepened further. – Up, up and away!

You might also ask yourself(!) if you have read enough and might be better served just meditating and getting on with it!

Who are you? ...I dunno ...but I am the space where everything is and thus there is not a thought that defines Me because I am just the place where the thoughts occur. Concurrently I am Jane Doe and Paloma Porta - these personalities I see playing out in the game of life ion the oneness of Me. The important thing is to feel the blank core within and meditate or watch thoughts or bust stress as best you can from there and start by seeing every jolly process of the mind as an object or thing to look at.

The Quakers: The Religious Society of Friends

I have discovered The Quakers!

A Quaker Meeting is an adventure or exploration into “stillness” or “The Light” as they call it. Sounds familiar! After doing some reading and I went along to a meeting the next Sunday.

And that’s what we did! We went into The Now. Lovely!

It turns out that the Christian roots of The “Religious Society of Friends” is really more historical that relevant today. In the 1650s in England when The Quakers were founded that’s what everyone was – a Christian. Even today I have my religion entered as “Church of England” on my birth certificate –it’s the default setting!

You might do your own research on the quotes of George Fox but here is a pearl:-

“When temptations or troubles appear” he writes “sink down in that which is pure, and all will be hushed and fly away”.

Dare I comment upon George Fox? I might humbly propose that he and his early Friends were so caught up in battling with the established Church and occupied with not getting hanged, burnt, beaten or imprisoned that it sits in my mind as almost an allegory, a parallel story, of the mind battling with itself , that many seekers experience today. Mind wars.

So much has been said by Enlightened Masters, Gurus, The Buddha and indeed the brave founders of The Quakers regarding the oneness, The Light, The Stillness, The Now.

I would say too much has been read and not enough has been experienced.

“Why gad you abroad? … Return, return to Him that is the first love, and the firstborn of every creature who is the Light of the world….Return home to within…” Francis Howgill . 1660-ish

Sometimes the old English in these quotes from the early Quakers to me is slightly unclear but I definitely get the idea that they are going within to the stillness and not looking outside themselves.

I have found there is Peace. And the Peace is beyond understanding, if we place understanding itself in the world of rational thought and thinking. It seems common testimony that one need only look within to one’s core or centre and there all the answers sit. Answers to all the questions spring forth here from who we are and not from outside ourselves where I and many others have been looking. As we come back from the stillness at the centre we find a world we judge as this or that, and these judgments and beliefs are but thoughts - thoughts we have found that are also things, objects that try to define us yet are not who we really are.

Do not trouble yourself to put your experience of Peace into words. There is no truth in thought that I have found except in the rare most delicious poetic exceptions, yet even they too alas, do not state the truth but humbly point at it.

After experiencing a moment here you may say “life is perfect” and “all is well” but at the same time you may know that the opposite is also true and that suffering abounds. But you will smile and there will be Peace.

Hopefully my ideas stated here will give something for your mind to rest easily upon and help it not fret. The mind is not all that you are!

Soothing thoughts and The Stillness

It is the practice of mental health books and self-help, usually, to promote soothing thoughts. Even in the “spirituality business” as I have said, one finds such maxims as “this too shall pass”.

You can see where I am going here. A thought is but a thought and to layer a “good” one on top of a “bad” one or a “true” one over a “false” one is just living solely in the duality and a separation from who we are.

I spoke to a lady the other day who is troubled mentally and physically. All must (?)yield to time; old age sickness and death and all that! Surely her way to Peace is clear? Drop into The Groovy Stillness – what else can be said?

The more I go into “it” the more the import, the significance and meaning falls out of my thinking and the concerns in life. The dire, grave, serious importances of my life seem to have washed away. And for those deep worries that occasionally arise I find I can meditate and stop taking them seriously.

Don’t think –meditate!

I thought lots of thoughts for several very depressing decades and them meditated as much as I could for only 2 years and “saved myself”.

I suppose I want you to get disillusioned with thinking. I am repeating myself here but I worry (!) that you may still feel that thinking can provide answers. I have turned away from thinking.

Try this as  a test –maybe a final failed test for the efficacy of rational thought with regards to seeking Peace.
Example> “I can do as I wish without reference to moral codes because all is an illusion- thus I should have no guilt”. Ok, I just made that up
 – but think all day long –think for a year if you don’t believe me – and see where you get –I will tell you where you will get – and you have two hopes, no-hope and Bob Hope !!!

Now just watch the thought as you might watch a car on the road as I described in the method. It’s a thing, an object that has importance labelled onto it and also may carry with it some emotions. It may spawn more thoughts all of which can be watched.

The idea is thus to emerge with a perhaps non-thought based “higher” understanding. And a smile. And peace.

For Peace and for matters arising, always return to The Stillness. I pray that you will know this as true and worthy advice  from deep within your own experience and not because I have written it. . . You have all the answers within you and you need only simply look.

Important note on meditation 

By meditate I mean “stop!”

Just pause what you are doing and have a moment in the Stillness. Don’t do this while operating heavy machinery like a 300 foot industrial crane or when landing the Space Shuttle.

But if the kids or work or circumstances allow – just pause the train of thought and explore The Stillness. I don’t jog but I can do it when walking.

So when I say say “meditate” here –I don’t necessarily mean going the full monty. In fact for serious mediation all I do is sit in a chair, having established that I probably will not get interrupted.

Recapping A Little : The Quest for Peace

I have expressed my concern that these words may never portray what I have seen in the Stillness or The Now but they can signpost my experience for others.

My journey has taken me from a world of confused conflicting and depressing thought to a better state of mind that doesn’t include permanent happiness but does contain more peace and moments of joy.

I have had great success personally in meditating and very little in the endless entertainment of thoughts.

My suspicion arose that a thought or an idea held in the mind may never be able to reflect what I have experienced as true.

I have examined thoughts and found them not to have a great meaning but rather to have a common thread of irrelevance!  

While great thoughts have spawned great things they yet are irrelevant in the Quest for Peace.

My journey has been to a place at the Centre: the centre of a swirling whirlwind of thought.  And as I visit this place more and more the answers to the questions appear in a manner void of thought.

I find I am Peace.

I am not my thoughts though they seek to define me. There is nothing to attain here. Yet when I resume the day to day reality I still find suffering. Together these make the Duality we all find in Life.

The Duality in the non-duality became clear.

How many things are in this world , this perhaps infinite universe, and other universes(?)
A lot!
But also there is only One Thing!!!

For the many parts make the real world of time and energy and space and worry; and The One Thing makes a dream that means nothing except for its worth as perhaps a game – the play of Lila.

I decided that neither is true if it exclude the other. 
The mentally judged impossible scenario exists-  Life is both real and yet unreal!

So go ahead with the methodology you choose towards calming the mind and finding Peace. Maybe try the method I have outlined here.

The Quest for Peace, your journey alone may heal the world. You may save the world and spark a spiritual awakening that transforms mankind. If you did you may now see this would be both a wonderful powerful important thing and also of no consequence at all !!!

The more I journey and am still, the more Understanding I have but I am keen for you to have your Understanding not mine.

From here I feel unable to use this language to communicate my experience further. I truly feel an Understanding that will not be written.

I could say perhaps what might be Understood is What You Are.

You have all the answers within you and you need only simply look.

Who are you?

Where do we go from here?

For Peace and for matters arising, always return to The Stillness. I pray that you will know this as true and worthy advice  from deep within your own experience and not because I have written it. . . You have all the answers within you and you need only simply look.

As we visit The Now, The Stillness we find an Understanding that the mind often cannot understand and that the mind may struggle to translate to thought or even battle against. It can progress to where one view in the mind accepts This Divinity and another flails around in confusion. This is where the Enlightened Master seems so groovy as her mind has somehow reconciled the incomprehensibility or perhaps even actually understood it. The Master has a mind that had stopped worrying about it all. The Master probably has faith: faith in something the thoughts cannot articulate or understand.

For us to be Enlightened or find Peace I thus maintain that one must constantly refer to the background stillness that is behind the thoughts and not do as I have done which is to wallow in vain, in a sea of old and new thoughts for answers.

I am breaking the habit of trying to think things through. As I have said, I beg you with a cherry on the top, to return to the stillness for answers.

I feel it’s important to remember the nature of the duality, The Creation: we find ourselves buzzing around in a hectic reality of lives and times, but yet it is all a dream and as a dream is just a fabrication for fun – the play of Lila.

I would not aspire to become Enlightened or change the world because Life is fine as it is and yet there is suffering and things should be changed! –  to understand and remain comfortable with this mental dichotomy one need only set aside the thoughts and return to The Stillness.

You may find confusion arising and troublesome thoughts require a constant willingness to meditate.

(Repeated):

For Peace and for matters arising, always return to The Stillness. I pray that you will know this as true and worthy advice  from deep within your own experience and not because I have written it. You have all the answers within you and you need only simply look.

“Advanced Meditation”

I think it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee!

Some of you whether Buddhists, Witches or Quakers have visited the spiritual realms one to many times to continue to deny your experience by labeling them as beliefs (something held as true yet considered unproven).

It’s time to move on from the “mundane” world as the witches call it. The world of Newtonian Science that is still found in present day dinosaurs(!) who have  secular explanations for everything and haven’t read “New Scientist” magazine since 1970!  Can we leave Harry Potter’s “Muggles”(non magic people) to flounder and can we move on – and get on The Love Train that is modern thinking?

It’s time to evolve.

Let us leave our doubts behind. There are thoughts that reality is real and that it is produced by a happy post big bang accident and furthermore “when you die –you die”. But these are just thoughts and thoughts are just a tiny fraction of “What Is”. And a thought cannot be negated by another thought – not really –not in my experience – and the reason for this is probably that a thought is actually a thing, an object, as I have have said earlier and as such will always exist somewhere in linear time no matter what.

So let us meditate and drop into the oneness.

And you might experience as many, many, many have, that this reality is like a dream with many similarities to an illusion.

And you might explain it to your mind as I have : that reality and time are both real and unreal: that all of Creation is but one thing, The One Thing and that The One Thing is You, and yet concurrently there is you and me and us and an infinite numbers of things.

And you might experience that this reality is a tiny fraction of what can be perceived as we tap into the oneness, the stillness, the now, the Tao, the God that we are, and are a part of.

And you might get comfortable with the idea of not being able to explain your experience and understanding with words.

And you might not hurry to answer the questions that form as thoughts and not trouble the mind with worry, but pause to experience The Stillness.

And you might find the answers that come cannot be spoken.

And you might smile.

And you might experience immortality.

And you might experience Peace.

But most of all I hope you find Love. Because from the experiences I have had in my journeys to within myself, I suspect that Love is the primordial building block of everything.

7^th June 2013 : Oops – I had a reality adjustment.

I was filling an hour before going to work by reading a book , yet another book, on spirituality and this one was like mine it described a journey from despair to peace. It included all the phrases one might expect about how wonderful the world is and plenty mini-conclusions of joy such as  “Life is brilliantly placed to lead us to pathways to peace and happiness”

But I realised I was not feeling wonderful ,not really, I was feeling better than two years ago but not floating around in a cloud of joy and bliss.

And I got annoyed – more determined – I ramped up the intention to clear the mind – I’ve felt this power before and it sort of sharpens my vision clears my mind and consolidates my purpose. Something inside of The One Thing stirred within the tiny me-ness and I felt the “ sleeping giant filled with a great resolve” [a reference to Pearl Harbor WW2 if you care to google it]

I’ve been meditating, here and there but there’s been too many books read, too much pandering to emotion and thought,too many excuses for not meditating in short I feel a severe reality adjustment (one of my favourite expressions).

Succinctly :-

I am not there yet.

It’s time to get some time in meditating.

It’s time to stop effing about.

No really!

I should report a previous moment of clarity that occurred two days ago that crystalised my purpose in life which is : “ To do the Lord’s work”. This is written in the language perhaps of the Quakers, the recent focus of my reading and meditation. I have already stated such pink and fluffy things a “I am here for you” but doing the work of God or Eternal Presence or Oneness is a more accurate description.

But mostly there is a feeling of self-preservation – I don’t feel happy enough or Peaceful enough to carry on as I have done. I need to ramp it up a bit.

I am aware that this does look like a resurgence of the ego and mini me. It sounds like the mini-me personality that mind tells me I am,  just trumpeting away in empty blast and fury, but it’s not that –it’s somehow deeper –it’s more plugged into the Big Cheese Me that somehow is Everything. Part of it feels like the mini-me has been spoken too by the Higher Power. It’s hard to describe but very groovy.

What follows then will be the result of some more meaningful (!) and intensive meditation.

Intermission . Have a look at this:-    (18^th June 2013)

This is based on deathbed testimony of founding Quaker, James Naylor, in 1660.

I have converted it somewhat to modern English and changed and added to better reflect my view of oneness.

It’s a mess as prose as it clearly hops in and out of C17 and C21 English!

To google the original search for:-

“There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things”…which is his opening line.

I am Spirit. You are Spirit. Come Home! So imagine you now say:
 “I delight to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delight to endure all things, in hope to enjoy Everything. I outlive all wrath and “drama”[contention], and  weary out all cruelty and even worship, or whatever is of a nature contrary to Spirit. I see to the end of all temptations, blame, shame, regret and guilt. I bear no evil in Myself, so conceive no thought of evil to any other. If betrayed, I bear it, for my ground and spring is  love, compassion, and forgiveness. My crown is the purest distillation of unconditional love and people begin to dissolve in Me there. I take my kingdom humbly and not with status , and keep it by lowliness of mind. In people’s heart alone I live for in their mind I vanish.  I am seen in sorrow, and emerge without pity; nor do I murmur at grief and oppression. People should never rejoice but through sufferings; for with the world's joy they think there are separate from Me. Spirit may be found when alone and perhaps forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and eternal holy life. Now smile(!) because with immortality, an endless creation of time and nobody really dying; where in the long run, is the suffering? Yet there is suffering; but through their heart, core or centre people can come Home and be at Peace because their thoughts do not change what they really are!"

It’s hurried and not that well done and doesn’t compare to “The Naylor Sonnets” by Kenneth E. Boulding of the 1940s.

It's interesting that he should almost recommend suffering as a way to the Lord and see joy as not good - "...for with the world's joy it [spirit] is murdered"

...more notes here!

Another method:-

The background 18^th June 2013

I need to write this up – but as a quick note to self – I have had some success with this. When bedazzled and confused with a thought stream or stress I can look behind or under the thoughts and feel the stillness. From there one rises or goes or desends into the oneness and Calm –the Calm grows and the thoughts subside –or “hush and fly away” as George Fox said.      The Calm –I quite like that!

31ST JULY 2013

...when "returning"(!) to The Background one is diving beneath thoughts or a thought stream. I find myself watching thoughts there. Then as I explore what this Background is I discover it is indeed the Core Me but also it seems to be the Core You and Core Everyone Else.
The key here is
When thinking about the experience of the Background -it will not think through - it just doesn't seem to fit into a mind based explanation.

And for practical efficacy in meditation (finding Peace) :
1. seeking The Background and then
2. exploring The Background 
is an entrance point that I sometimes find easier than setting out to watch thoughts and then ask "who am I" (my method thus far).

Exploration

…recently experienced successes July 2013

EXPLORE!

I am diving into the Oneness freshly each time...to discover what’s there.- if you like – but then I am doing this with no sense of “I” – it is just perception and exploration.

When I look at a table –the English sentence structure grammatically demands a subject that is looking – I am looking.

But here it might be better stated as

Looking at the table.  

Thus I am exploring the oneness is better stated as:-

Perceiving the oneness. An exploring.

Don’t start with a construct or idea like

“I am everthing”

Or “I am creating all this”

Or “we all are One”

Whatever

…just explore without a mind based belief system or mind-pacifying explanation.



.....A few months have passed and many hours meditating....

Catch 22      (added Sept 2013)

"Catch 22" is in popular usage and from the WW2 combat novel by Joseph Heller.

My use of it here is :

A situation in which the desired outcome is impossible to attain because of a circular set of defeating rules.

from the novel:
1. To fly (flying raids),one must be crazy
2. To be asked to be excused duty one must be sane
3. Thus no one can apply (escape) duty by claiming to be crazy.

Meditation catch 22

I heard that a Zen master once said something like - "anyone who comes to me to meditate should be beaten with a stick because to meditate is to accept that one is separate."

Thus the moment one sits to meditate with the goal or purpose of enlightenment or achieving oneness is to accept or create that one is separate! .. Is this valid?

Firstly any catch 22 can be defeated -nothing is impossible, there are no rules and yet the only rule I ever found was: Spirit is the law and that's the only law there is...!!!

From my meditation methodology : Catch 22 is a thought construct - is that a thought? Yes.

Clearly the "purpose of meditation" as "achieving oneness (etc)" is self defeating, because there is the Zen master's catch 22 and per my method one is meditating with a thought construct or belief system of inherent separateness firmly in place first.

Thus one must (?) not have a such a goal and better I think (!) is to regard meditation as merely redirecting one's attention.

We can study this document or the weather or our toes or we can study the Self and call the latter "meditation". Meditation- redirecting attention.

I am in trouble here because "redirecting attention" is doing something and this is where the words break down - - gasp - in "meditation and the contemplation of The Self" there is no doing or being or anything. . These words are from the mind and meditation is to escape the mind. Kind of !

The Monkey Mind - "These are not my thoughts"

Despite the book! Though I have lifted a great depression (hooray) and have seen The Light(!) and feel I am That - mostly - the mind keeps coming !!! The thoughts of separation and ..er bullshit...still keep coming.
What's going on ? 
Where is all this stuff coming from?

"Is that a thought?" Has ruled supreme to dissolve all questions and lines of deductive reasoning or attempts to codify and pigeon hole and explain the world in both myself and in "the way it is" from other people and internet videos and books.

However two  thoughts have been of service to perhaps correct the mind chatter's theme to turn off "Radio separation FM" of the mind. :-

1. Everything is inside of Me
2. These are not my thoughts.

Why #2 works is a bit tricky to pin down -it seems to work on a couple of levels. (a. and b. below)

a. There is the psychic leaking of other peoples thoughts onto me!
I seem to tune into other peoples "Radio Separation FM".
This broadcast seems to be emotions and the thoughts seem to spawn inside the mind once the emotion has been assumed to be "mine" -the mini-me's.
As I sit here typing I can feel  other people emotions in the air, a broadcast from  "Worldwide Radio Separation FM" - can you?
If not -ask yourself:
"Are these my thoughts and emotions?"
If the answer is still "no" and even though you do feel it's not from "Other People's Radio Separation  FM" then:

b. "These are not my thoughts"  because they are not My (Big Me's) thoughts because Me does not have a specific mind associated with it like mini-me does.
A thought attempts to define and establish a mini-me and a Separate world-mostly.

Does the Big Me have thoughts?
No.
Yes - it has all the thoughts!

Does the Big Me have self defining thought?
No.
Yes - it has all of the many and "your" mini-me's self defining thoughts!


"These are not my thoughts" I have found to be useful and yet wonderfully innacurate -like any thought I suppose!

Tricky.

Back to the Method -Who are you? What are you ?

This is the vital clue really.

It's the bottom line.

Look at something -anything, and ask "Who or what is looking?".

You will not be able to find a "me" that is doing the looking.

It's like a sentence that should be:

"I see the tree"

becomes:

" ... see the tree"

If you are thinking - "mmm interesting yes it might definitely appear that way but I wonder ..etc etc etc"

Then I beg you look for an answer with more intention. 

This is quite important don't you think? Who am I? 

You have been seeking and on a path for years , maybe decades, maybe lifetimes, maybe eons, maybe many universes of untold time and in untold realities and NOW you've got the chance to enquire about all of it.

And this is the bottom line question don't you think?

Who has been experiencing allll this stuff?

so try this:

Who or what the FUCK am I?

sorry!

get it?

have a good look.

take an hour sometime to have a look
if not, go back to important stuff like cleaning the fucking fridge.
LOL (laugh out loud)

I have heard that The Buddha's key lesson and teaching was that we meditate, meditate, meditate.

Have a look. Who or what am I? 
I beg you, please, pretty please, pretty please with a cherry on the top.

The final solution to depression,trauma and mental nasties-Awareness and Consciousness

Finding out about "what I am" has helped with this in my life. I use "what I am" in parentheses because I really cannot find much of a "I" or me there.

This means that when traumatic emotions and thoughts occur I tend to get the thought "this is not me these are things arising in an empty me" or something like that. Thereafter I greet the trauma as an observer (learnt from watching thoughts) and slowly or quickly move to an empty state of observation only. Then the depression etc evaporates -pretty cool eh?

I might add traumatic thoughts seem to be centred in my head. Emotions occur anywhere in the body, in all of the body and also there and close to the body -perhaps filling where an aura might be.

Strong negative emotions feel very close to a created me -the mini-me - and sometimes they are tricky to move away from.

It's interesting to note I have never felt the need to separate from positive emotions. I tend to bask in them. I could propose that this is a clue to why suffering is ....good - it leads to self inquiry and spiritual growth -as most have experienced.

I could say "Desire is suffering -suffering will set you free". - etc -so what! But I am not a fan of excessive clever thinking!

The more I investigate the Real Me the easier my mental issues dissolve. The Quest for Peace.

...Awareness and Consciousness

When I look I can find no "me" , there is no "me" there.-hmmmm

Having meditated a lot , these days, this is not always the case.

When really into it there seems to be only an undefinable Awareness. There is an obserevd experience only. From here it's like watching Life like one might watch ants -"oh look another one drowned". Right and wrong, good and bad - everything merges into one neutral thing. Experience.

Then I feel the next and first step of Undefinable Awareness is to think "I am". Which for me qualifies as Consciousness (being aware of being aware). And it perhaps it is from here that Enlightened people say "I am That" and "I am Everything". Before the "I am" thought (is it a thought?-not sure...) ...before "I am " there is just experience.

..by "experience" I mean what is occurring; a perceived world including thoughts and emotions.

Try it for yourself - I move to the background between the thoughts. I observe thoughts. And move out of a mini-me.
Then I find there is often still a "me" there that percieves and experiences.
Then as I stay with this Consciousness- the "I am" sort of fades away into the Undefined Awareness.

Like I said -don't read it here -it's of no value -try it for yourself!!! 
What is your truth?

A Fast Entrance Point Mediation.

By now you might have methods to get to "The Observer" quickly -if not try this:-
. Find an object, any object -cup or wall or painting
. Find any thoughts arising
. Watch them all as "objects"
.Consider, what is the "me" that is observing them?
.Consider that the "me" (Real Me) has no thoughts because it watches thoughts.
.Investigate The Watcher (Real Me).

. As you go ...deeper (?)....you may note or investigate the transition from the "thought-less I am" (consciousness) to an Undefined Awareness.

.Meanwhile you will find Peace - hooray!

Don't forget - this may not be your experience in mediation!
Don't try to squeeze my ideas into what you find!
Don't accept anyone's ideas to mold and adjust what you find.
What is your truth?
Arrogance is Bliss!!!

(arrogance isn't bliss really -but you get the idea- find your own truth... arrogance maybe bliss -  perhaps everything is bliss!).

The Paradox -My World and Your World

I've said before in The One Thing opposites must exist (comfortably!) together. Traffic lights can be both red and green depending in what is happening to each person -it's possible - you can't say it's not possible -nothing can be impossible - okay -it might be impossible in this universe -but I don't care.

The Paradox of free will I have mentioned. I have free will, you have free will and this can be demonstrated and it feels right to us -but there is no free will in an individual because all Will sits with The One thing  -The oneness - the Eternal Presence - The Undefined Awareness - The background -  The Lord - The Whatever.

So I have an idea -it's my idea - and that's the truth without question - you can check it with anyone or anything including the Gods and they will tell you it's absolutely your idea....but it's not your idea, it was dreamed by Infinite Awareness, Infinite Consciousness.

The paradox comprises The Big Cheeze living as things in the world. The NothingandEverything experiencing through me, you, us, tress, birds and handbags.

The oneness is being me - how much fun is that? "Ooooooo I feel depressed and sad -BRILLIANT"

Unconditioned thinking -self realisation

I think the heading message is clear. The more one can get one's mind to smile at The Paradoxes, probably the more enlightened one is!

My World Your World

Why not?

I have mine and you have yours -this is evident and why not have them not necessarily overlapping perfectly?

"Wow  -did you see that?"

"See what?"

"That woman going into the grocers"

"No"

"I will marry her" ...haha...awwwww ...etc etc.

Or maybe have them perfectly synchronous in a seemingly impossible way. 

I have my free will and my competitor has hers.

But as I sign the deal with the Get Rich Quick Corporation my competitor who would never have missed this opportunity to shut me out has had an epiphany and decided to move back to exclusively selling used coat hangers again. A song, a dance. The Dance of Life.

Which is the truth of the above? .....trick question....probably both are true  -right? The Paradox.

Saints and snails -both are of equal value in God's Dream - and yet a Saint is a Saint and a snail is only a slimy mollusc!

Does it matter how reality works and what is the Truth? ....another trick question....."Yes of course the Truth is important, vital to know" and "No- nothing matters - nothing can be known"

Got me?

Going deeper Again -Impressions

Enlightenment, I am That, there is just experience....it's all becoming a bit blah blah blah especially if you have watched as many videos of The masters on youtube as I have.

I have Awakened, yet the mind still plays tricks -but it's not the mini-me "driving the bus". So I the mini-me, and my mind are comfortable with my "un-Enlightened" state. Kind of.

Let's go back to The Dynamic Tao and the Big idea. The Big Idea is "Life".

Also the idea of letting Oneness use me. It's like a prayer. In fact I feel my little purpose in Life is clear:-

"My purpose is - to do the Lord's work" - to use perhaps the language seen in a Quaker meeting.

So one is not blissed-out smiling at the world and explaining to others how to feel better all day. One may find oneself digging a hole in the middle of a snow covered field somewhere.

Or not.

So to ask to be guided -if you like - is to be moved and before movement there is a communication -from Above ! How does this communication manifest?

I think it may arrive as thoughts and as impulses and of course old fashioned serendipity.

This book is a good example -why am I doing it? I am not sure -but I feel compelled to do it.

One is being receptive to Motivation (capital M) , Impulses, Thoughts, Compellings.

Life is going somewhere. Why not be Moved?

It's a paradox - everyone is being moved and nothing matters - yet somehow being Moved (capital M) is more noble and matters.

If I am That, Everything -how come I am stuck in this body?

...and on a tiny blue planet near the edge of a lesser know galaxy in a back water universe?

Why not?!

Life is experiencing itself.

If you were looking for a God or Demi-God etc living here on Earth - he or she would almost certainly be a refrigerator repairman or check-out girl: that's almost a "given" - right? hehe.

Why? Probably because they got bored being worshiped and changing the weather to suit, on the planets they have lived on.

Why not?!

I've said before -if we were able to have anything we wanted; after 100,000 years we will be on our knees praying for misfortune.

Alan Watts* (worth a look) said somewhere [paraphrasing] if you were God Almighty you probably would be living the exact life you are living now -with all the illusion, self deception and not-knowing-who-you-are.

*Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973)

Why Not?!

What is your truth?

Stop reading - continue meditating

I've met plenty of Spiritual experts that can almost converse in Sanskrit.  Talking to them in text chat is okay so long as you are quick to copy paste words into Wikipedia!

If I get enlightened I want my Guru name to be Dufusji, Thickana  or maybe Dummbaba. LOL

Get There! Keep meditating!

I wonder what's left for me to say now.

Hmmm.

Maybe that's enough. (23 Sept 2013).
.almost...

Everything that happens and every idea in your mind.

Where does it come from?

What's your truth?

Who is the author of all creation including the object-world and the internal mental dialog?

Who is really thinking your (the mini-you's) thoughts?

Who you think you are -who is really thinking that?

Does not Everything start with the One Thing?

What is you truth?

If you agree then every dark, depressed, dismal, I-will-never-be-enlightened thought is ...Divine...from the thing you seek ...which is who? You! Your Real Self  -right?

In your worst moments ask:

Isn't the mini-me just an idea, a construct, a fabrication, a creation within a Bigger Me?

Who is really thinking that?

Whose emotion is that really?

Who is the author of these traumatic thoughts and emotions?

Is it not The Real Me? 

-A Real Me playing a Game from within a chess-piece mini-me?

The Play of Lila (Leela)

Perhaps this is a good place to end the book.

It has been said there is no truth in the mind and that the mind cannot grasp or explain or write The Truth - it cannot be thought.

But every depressed thought, deluded thought , every self deceiving broadcast from "Radio Separation FM" and all those woeful emotions that may compile utter utter depreession in the mind is ...Divine in origin. It's is from The Real You.

One only has to look at Who really thought the thought.

So here is the circle - the mind that can think no Truth (they say) finally can just smile and point to it's Author, The Creator, The Real You and show "the Truth in the mind" haha -how funny is that?

Depression - My escape route.

To cure depression, and even my old utter, utter despair and find Peace one need only look to the author of these horrors - and there I am -I am Peace.

A dear friend of mine died in 2009. He was a good man, a kind man and he had no idea he was going to die so young -one of the things he last said to me was this unexplained, stand alone question:

"Have you considered the comedy aspect?"

We were working apart -and he had phoned me. The mobile phone/cell signal was lost as it often did in those days and I thought about it. Things started to look amusing. More and more very serious things became amusing. By the time I got home everything was funny and I could barely stop giggling.

It's all a game -it's sport -it's a play -it's a dream. Enjoy.

Cycling through "The Method" Who or what am I? Nov 2013 

So I meditate daily. Or more accurately I meditate all the time. Something Alan Watts said in a lecture about how he has been investigating "the me" for years [or words to that effect].

The story so far.
The thoughts that occur can attempt to define me. They suggest who I am and what is true and what opinions I hold with value and what my judgements are about things. Thoughts also seem handy for material world recognition so that I don't step in front of the #42 bus!

Thoughts do not seem to be what I am and can be regarded as things.
Thoughts are things.

For anti-depression and general mood improvement the idea that worries and past life traumas are just thoughts has been a life saver. "Phew - I am not that thought!"

One aspect of what I am seems to be the pure observer, something neutral perhaps, that which is watching thoughts and the world go by; the uninvolved witness.

Neither is this a belief system as these are thoughts. This is something I have experienced when there are no thoughts. The only belief system in this is these thoughts written here because I cannot describe this thought free experience so well with the written word.

As I got deeper into this I found that when I looked around at the thoughts and the world that I could not pin down a "me" that was observing. There is perception and awareness of stuff but it seemed to start and finish in the thing witnessed without leading back to a central point of me-ness. Which is spooky. Ha ha.

Indeed the only thing that seemed to be me would be to say I am the entire experience because when I look at the #42 bus that's where the experience of the event starts and finishes - the bus seems to be me!!!

If there is a me - I am the movie and not the person sitting in my seat in row 3.

Comparing this experience to dreams:
Upon awakening we imagine we have been dreaming. These dreams when recalled (or imagined to have occurred) follow the construction above: namely one is the central character in a world of ones own creation -one is the movie.
This is almost exactly how the waking world appears to me . I am the central character in the movie "My Life". But like a dream and a movie -nobody really dies or gets rich or suffers -it's all smoke and mirrors, the Buddhist illusion.
If you think about your dreams for a minute you will get the idea. You're on a train and you realise it's a train from the 1950s, and you chat to a man with a bowler hat on and something goes bang and the adventure begins. But if you think about your dream-character, the train and the man you will see that you are aware of them all, but the observer, the "me" cannot be pinned down and indeed the things experienced are somehow part of you. This is to be expected in a dream of your creation because you know where you are and who you are really -you are asleep in bed. It's all just happening in you mind -right?

But look very very closely at the waking world -how is it different? One you push aside the thoughts that tell you that reality is real and that you are completely separate from things observed and really look. Imagine you are dreaming this life and see if the real world experience is different. It is different because you may notice that it's only the thoughts about reality that make it different. Reality is "I am here -that is over there". A dream is "I am everything"

Don't try to understand this! This needs to be seen, experienced. (Explain to me what "hot" or "soft" or the "smell of apples" is - see? -It's experienced.)

What is your truth? You will not find your truth written here!

Look at the H key on your keyboard. Look at the thoughts that arise "It is white with a black H, it's new, this never works for me!" etc. Try to find the observer of the letter H key and the thoughts; look for the "me". Focus! Have a good look -where's the me?? I find the "me" sort of spreads around into everything looked at. Weird huh?

So now there are thoughts arising and some of those thoughts are of the "reality is out there" type. But maybe now you have a problem and the problem is you have experienced that "reality is not out there" or if it is "I am very closely associated with the reality -in fact the only me I can find is everything experienced  - I am the movie - I am the video that plays out on my eyeballs!!!"
And worse ! "I am not the thoughts arising either - in fact I am just a witness.

"Undefined awareness" is how this is often written. But I have noted the obvious that the awareness "I am" is centred here in my chair -I experience reality like when I dream at night as the central character in the reality.

The trouble for me (!) now is that thoughts occur that want to explain this or hypothesise. "Am I the God of my reality? Are other people and things just my creation like in my dreams or a director's movie?" But these are thoughts!!! Thoughts are things occurring in the dream world also!

The only answer is to return to meditation. Look at the undefined awareness that seems to be me and investigate it further -ignoring thought.

Going deeper into Me!

As I sit here the world is occurring all around. More exactly; my world is occurring - the rest of the world is not seen, as least not perceived with the five senses.

And there are thoughts - but I would not call them "my thoughts" these days as it is an old concept based on a "me" that itself is defined by thought.

Thoughts are occurring.

The world here and thoughts are occurring. All these things can be observed and followed perhaps and perhaps followed with curiosity. 
Everything experienced looks like it could be me, this illusive me that I have been tracking down.
Yet I do not feel anything added to that especially I do not feel it is all my creation because that has the classic creations-are-out-there-feel to it with the separation of me and the experience.

For the outer reality of tables and chairs quite accurate would be: "The world is my dream" where I am the author of the entire experience.
And I am the central character about which the dream or film unfolds.

But the central character also has thoughts about the experience! Just like my dreams. Just like the narrated thoughts of the principal in a film. 

And the other characters seem to have thoughts also -at least I feel I can see them manifest and often feel I feel them with a sixth sense.

Where does reality come from and where do the central character's thoughts come from?

Everything is occurring within me - I feel that is more accurate than "I am everything".


Now it starts to become clear what's going on. The experience is creating itself within me! People are being people and doing stuff and the animals mess around and plants grow.

And the central character (the old "me") has thoughts about it all. Some thoughts are reactive or responsive to the reality like "OMG it's a banana!"haha.

Other thoughts are creative like "I think I will become an airline hostess"

But all ("my") thoughts are within this central character.

It has been observed by myself and others (!) that thoughts creates things -this is old news if you have not heard it before or disagree - I might dare to say , it almost qualifies as truth.

The origin of thoughts is probably belief systems that have been set up in the central character's mind.

"I am me" is the basic thought. And from here the nature of the character unfolds.
"I am creative" would account for clever ideas manifesting.

For goals and desire  -it would seem the central character actually runs the show-so ones desire and ability might only be restricted or limited by what belief systems are in place.



The thoughts come that tell me this is all very hard to believe and that I have made a mistake and not to be silly and to get on and sort my life out! Well that's probably what central characters tend to do -they want to live in a challenging world! For the central character to perform there must be limits to it's ability.

The key point here is not to confuse yourself with the central character - we return full circle to my older statements - do not mix up the Real You with the mini-you.

Conclusion -looking for "me"

My experience is that Everything is occurring with in me,
the Real Me.

There is a central character in the game that I had believed was me,
but really I am the big field of possibility where the game plays out.

My experience is that thoughts occur in the mind,
but they are not my thoughts,
they are the thoughts of the central character I follow in the game.

Going deeper into Me

 - restatement of the above - I wrote this for something else but feel it is worth including

Who is thinking "your" thoughts!!!

My experience in meditation is that core of the self cannot really be found.The basic basic "me" visible looks like "I am" but this too is a thought and can be seen as something only that attempts to define an undefined awareness.
From here I pondered -if there is no me then "who is thinking?"

For the answer I watch the Masters on youtube and sometimes I find I disagree slightly with what some of them are saying.
I vary with some Master's references to us having thoughts (especially desire and judgement) - I don't agree that; I think or we think! Well, almost, not exactly!...

I see thoughts occurring *within* (just "within"), rather than *from a "me"*. Everything comes from everything and so it is with thoughts. Lions "make" scared thoughts and chocolate(!) "makes" pleasurable thoughts -these thoughts occur

based upon the entirety of reality or this dream that we experience. "I" do not think rather; *thinking occurs* -this is my experience because I cannot find a me. Can you? lol. From here,with thinking occurring, I can see a self as a creation ,like the central character in one of my nightly dreams -all the world is "me" in that I dreamt it and the self is just at the centre of the experience.

The only me I can find is the big space where everything is occurring and thus thoughts occur in a created central character that I refer to as "me" in the day to day game or dream or world -"out there".
I am the whole movie and additionally not the girl with popcorn on row 3 (a watcher or observer) ; but my point here is neither am I the central character weeping over lost love ("me"). Thoughts occur for lost love and "I" weep -but that is only a part of me because the lost lover and everything seems to be within this bigger me -like my dreams. I do not have desire, desire is occurring and occurring only in the central character of my dream. And if I assume I will not wake up then...
Everything is me, including a distressed or happy mini-self,the central character.
Sometimes my central character , "me" does not believe it , these thoughts occur -but they're funny because they're just the sort of thoughts a central character in a separate world would think!!
It's a mind bender! Sometimes the central character has to tell herself "Don't worry -it's all your dream" which isn't quite the truth but it helps with suffering and usually I pop out of being the central character and return to the Real Me.




What Ram Dass says

Because we are in time, we think that the future has not yet happened. But it’s very much like being a character in a book, and you’re on page 23 and you don’t know what’s going to happen on page 24, because you think you’re the character in the book. But now imagine you’re reading the book – well, you could turn over and find out what happened on page 24. Now imagine you wrote the book.

http://www.ramdass.org/lawfulness-universe/



So I have returned to my method of describing things. The Real Me and the mini-me. The Real Me has Everything in the experience occurring within. The mini-me or character in the book or film has thoughts. So....I suppose it depends on

whether we "think you’re the character in the book." [Ram Dass -above quote].
Because to be the character then clearly :- "I am thinking" and "I think therefore I am" and all that is...er....true ! - It's only the central character thinking.
But to be the Big Thing is what is occurring really   and thoughts are just occurring within.
And the source of thoughts is the same as the source of Everything. Everything comes from Everything. It All is making Itself.
This is my experience in meditation.

This is my truth only. What's your truth?

Oh - Everything comes from Everything. It All is making Itself.

I don't think I worked through this.
It's my experience in meditation.

AND FINALLY...

How to be "Enlightened"

Have a look at the works and videos of U.G Krishnamurti (9 July 1918 – 22 March 2007)

He negates every thought or idea offered to him by any interviewer. Mostly he offers the opposite view and demonstrates that if you have truth on one side then one can find truth on the other. Thus he seems to attack the world because most interviewers have  ideas that are "good" or "moral" or "ethical" or "for our betterment"...or even "loving" and "compasionate".

He might propose the thief should get the money, he has put forward ways where Hitler caused some benefit, described Mother Teresa as a "lesbian bitch" and proposed that Jesus and The Buddha were con men. He might say "you have a beautiful wife and should be proud but even prouder if you lost her". He just negates all thought constructs and he himself says that he doesn't believe anything and contradicts himself all the time - probably because he consistently only opposes beliefs offered rather than weighing them up against his own.


He says that only Holy Men and criminals change their names and that all Guru's are just conning us and taking our money. He freely admits that for him to live the most important thing is to have money because only by having money can there be food, clothing, shelter and the purchase of pleasures. 

"Saints and snails"- I think he would see them as the same. 

He describes "all thought as destructive". Reality is a dream and thus to be awake or asleep is the same -consciousness never sleeps. There is no self -no identity and life for the "person" plays out automatically.

He is harsh -and I don't swallow all of it -and he wouldn't want me to accept any of it anyway. He says "I have my opinions and they are worthless like anyone else's". I get the idea that he doesn't really believe anything he says for the most part except that the person-the self doesn't really exist and neither does reality, it's a dream and thus all judgements, philosophies and religions and those that propose or sell them are irrelevant. Everything just is and each of us is that -all of it.

It is only the very question itself that makes the questioner, the self; the doubt only makes the doubter; the thought the thinker, the self -the identity; because without these we can find no "me".



However, for me his message is clear and yet it is not adequately described above or by any thought or bunch of ideas! - My opinion is as worthless as U G's! - probably more worthless!

How to be "Enlightened":-

My conclusion from my researches and meditations and U.G Krishnamurti's final push of "insight" in me, is as follows.


Reject all thought.
Reject all thoughts.


What don't you understand by the words "all thoughts"?
All beliefs
All worries
All ideas about the past
All ideas about the present
All ideas about the future
All ideas about past or present trauma
All ideas about your body
All of your story
All the definitions of "me"
All labels put on objects - eg It's a tree
All judgements
All opinions
All desire
All resistance
All goals
All things wanted
All things unwanted
All things that need to be changed or fixed in the world
All things that need to be changed or fixed in yourself or others
All desire to reduce suffering
All ideas about world peace
All ideas about any Gurus, Jesus or Mohammed or The Buddha
All ideas about what they said
All ideas about self improvement

All ideas about sleeping and dreaming and waking up in the morning and having a cup of tea
All hope for personal Peace


All thoughts of any description.

All thoughts about metaphysical stuff like being a spiritual being
All thought about reincarnation
All thought about psychic stuff

All thoughts about enlightenment
All thoughts about the bliss and ecstasy or peace "they" told you is there


All ideas about reality
All ideas about dreams
All ideas about whether reality is really a dream and whether or not you are this or that or whatever in it
All ideas about Quantum Physics and the Holographic Universe and Holographic brains and stuff
All ideas about the "Field" in quantum physics
All ideas about particles and waves and electrons and fields of possibility -all that stuff


All ideas about non-duality -Advaita
All ideas about "separation"
All ideas about oneness

All ideas about undefined awareness
All ideas about a "mini-me" and a "Real-Me"
All ideas written here in this book


All ideas about the "Quest For Peace"
All ideas about "Arrogance is Bliss"


All questions
All really important questions
All logic
All certainties
All doubts
All answers
All truth


Reject them all
Reject all thought.


...and besides, when there is a thought of any description -whose thought is it really?
It's not yours  -it's Yours.


...groovy isn't it?.........Is that a thought?


Okay, that's the end of the book!

7th December 2013 


I wrote some more -maybe I should just stop? (January 2014)

Meditation and God

1.There is a God
2. God is Infinite
3. We are inside God
4. Everything that we are is a part of God
5. Our awareness (seeing things etc) is God's awareness.
5a.  The "self",the person you and I often think we is an illusion. We are all a part of God and made of God and thus inseparable. We separate(!) from God , or appear to by following thoughts of separation. Yet they are God's thoughts -so it's all good!
6. Everything we are aware of (stuff seen -The Creation) is also inside God
6a. Everything perceived is God.

7. (recap) When "we" are aware we are just God being aware.
 8.. (recap) When "we" see something we are just looking at God.
 9. (succinct recap) To perceive and be aware of things is God perceiving God
10.(overall recap) When we perceive there really is no you and me -there is only God and it is God seeing more God (the world/The Creation). The illusion is God's illusion. However you  and me and the world seem to exist - so there is The Duality - but the Duality is all made of  The  One Thing -God. My friend calls Everything a "Plurality" (The One Thing made of many things).


11 The world is real and also unreal -it's just all "God's dream world"
12. There is good and bad as we judge it -but only as we judge it -because Everything is (all good) inside of God.
13. To judge, is to criticize God for making something in perfect - but it's okay because it's just God (us) judging God (the imperfect thing) -which is just a bit of fun...
14.. The Creation (us and the world) is just inside God and perhaps a "bit of fun" (The Play of Lila ["Lila":- Wikipedia] )
15. For meditation - the awareness of Everything ( physical objects, thoughts , emotions and all  those good and bad judgements, desires,resistances, belief systems , worries etc etc )...
...the awareness of Everything is us as God perceiving God. My perception is God perceiving.
 The world "I" see is...God.
When we meditate or are aware of anything at anytime,actually, it's just God looking at Himself (Herself/Itself)

16. Try it!  Meditate as God looking at Itself!
Remember - God is also your thoughts and mental processes so even being aware of (a barrage of) thought is also God looking at God.
"We" do not have to stop thinking or suspend all worries and emotions - we just can be mindful of what is really occurring.
Also to "Meditate as God looking at Itself" ie meditating while holding a thought like "I am really God seeing myself" is to meditate on or with a thought. It's probably a mantra and would look good and sound good in sanskrit,pali, tibetan,chinese or japonese! (Om lovelly jubbelly bum---a joke)
Just meditate -whatever that is (see the book above for details !!!)

17. Don't worry -be happy -haha

The  Duality or Plurality

This is the key for my mental understanding of this -How to put it into some sort of thought construct.
1.In this dream of ours does anything exist? Did anyone really die? No
2.Yet things exist and people die.
That's Duality.
For Plurality:-
3. Everything has it's own world - my computer is in front of me and yours is in front of you and someone else has their computer and their world... Many different worlds. Which perhaps is many different dreams. But I am not alone in my dream with all the other people being fictional characters of my own creation: yet as  God -I am alone in my dream with all other people as made up fictional characters!
In this dream  -did anyone (any illusory separate person) attain Enlightenment? No. Yet some people seem to have figured it out and are enlightened.


It's a mind bender.
But I don't think the mind is well equipped to fully grasp it. To do that it seems some cessation of thought is required for Understanding.
For Understanding try #16 above! Meditation.

A new way of talking

If you have followed all this  -or it aligns with your experience in mediation then you might employ the following language trick to answer the really nasty questions!
Refer to "yourself" (yes?) in the 3rd person.
Questioner:  "Paloma  -if you are God or 'at one with God' you must know everything - What do i have in my pockets?"
My Answer:  "Paloma doesn't know- how could she know? Except for the misty psychic impressions she gets with this sort of thing- she doesn't know"
Questioner:  "But you now speak like God; if Paloma doesn't know, You must! What's in my pockets?"
My Answer:  "You see Paloma, you ask Paloma, I live through Paloma. Paloma doesn't know".
"...that's not the truth though - Paloma cannot seem to find a way to say that or write that down. Everything she says seems only to point towards it ,not state it. For example and for starters - there is no you, Paloma or God, these are just ideas,thought constructs and all merely human based as well .There is just One Thing and in it, stuff happening!".

There is just One Thing and in it, stuff happening!




Imagine you are a drop in the ocean. A scuba diver swims past and you shout out "Hey -over here!" and the scuba diver says he cannot see you, all he can see is water. He comments that you only think you are separate from the rest of the ocean.









CONTINUED IN PART 2

I KEEP HAVING DIFFICULTY SAVING MORE TEXT ONTO THIS POSTING -maybe it is getting too big.
However  - there is a time gap here after the last written here - and I feel ... "more awakened".
Paloma June 21st 2014


 (1st July 2015)
HERE ARE SOME ENDINGS TO THE BOOK  and they should go at the end!
But I have left them in here at the end of Part One as they are relevant as an overview. 

AND I decided it's not a book -it's just a blog!
The only way it may be a book is if I just copy paste it into ebook format in the future.

 

  Conclusion and final final end of the book!  17th January 2014

I have proposed a methodology to find Peace. I can be honest and say it has helped me find some Peace from the whirrings of the mind but I would not classify myself as "enlightened". What is it that becomes enlightened? There's no person there to be enlightened or unenlightened that I can find! Enlightenment seems just to be a lack of thought processes -the quietening of the mind -in which case a duck is enlightened. In my world environmental pressures (financial and work related) remain quite high in my life and this does impact a "me" from time to time; questions arise still as do worries and mental stress. It is winter and I am cold  -oh to be like a monk or Guru where all bills (especially heating bills) are paid! But deep within I can wonder at the falseness of  any stress or any worries that occasionally manifest -I know they are an illusion. In fact I know they come from Everything in my world and not from a "me" that appears sometimes to be separate. Certainly I would say I am not depressed and the utter despair that was experienced a few years ago when I started has gone. I have found a large piece of The Peace and the Peace was there all the time!

I am becoming less and less interested in meditation and more amused than upset by the silliness in the thoughts and emotions that pop up; being the whole movie ,being the whole dream, being the whole experiencing does make the central character's concerns seem a little  - comical. It compares a little to worrying about the robot in the Terminator film!

There is awareness and the awareness sits not in Paloma Porta or the 'real life' me - the awareness is somehow distributed in everything perceived. I am my world. I am my dream. I am the experience -there is only the experience.
Thoughts arise, emotions arise, questions and their answers arise -all of them happen - but none of them really mean anything except to show -There is Life.

From there -I have experienced that this, shall we call it, "Undefined Awareness" seems to be what people call God or Brahman. But I cannot speak for God(!) -but I feel a connection, a joining, the oneness. Which is very nice!

During the book - a report on my meditaions - I dabbled a little in other things that became my experience. I discussed the seat of creation itself -where a creative thought or any thought or emotion comes from. I decided it was from the One Thing because there is only One Thing. I cannot say now whether this be true or false as even truth itself seems unstateable.  Indeed I have constantly complained  that I feel unable to write or say the truth - maybe it can be done - perhaps it has been done in poetry or scripture -I do not know. My words seem only to signpost or point where the truth might be found.

 

But from my experience of moving among spiritual people the first step seems to be finding out who we are and so I will finish with that:-

My method is not really my method. it has been stated before by many others. But I think these three keys steps are sort of new.
1. Look around and watch all thought and emotions. Including questions , their answers, all beliefs, all worries, trauma, all mental labels placed on objects and events, and everything that occur mentally.
2. For thoughts that seem important or confusing or that carry you off; ask "Is that a thought?" The implication being that it is only a thought and not to be taken seriously. Regard thought as merely something else in the awareness. We are looking for the substance of the awareness we have.
3. As the mind quietens and just the naked awareness of the experience becomes more visible, occasionally ask "Who or what am I?"

The method is so simple actually. Restated: the focus is to discover what or who is perceiving, the nature of the awareness we have, and not to think about it and if thoughts arise to merely include them as things we are aware of. We see the world -everyone perceives something -what is it that perceives?
Look at something -what is looking? If a thought offers an answer - what is looking at the thought answer?

The old joke works here.  Meditation -it's not what you think!

I have repeatedly written and said that I could not find the "me" I thought I was. When I first started after 20 minutes I found there was no "spiritual being" there that I was expecting to locate - it was quite a shock to the mind and thoughts flew around all over the place! Thereafter the nature of the awareness became more and more apparent.

Good luck. Have a go at it. It doesn't matter if you do or don't or what happens. It's just Life. It's all very Zen!

 

May I offer my mostest humblest huggfullest love?
Love you. 

Paloma Porta
17th January 2014.

 

The End. The Beginning.  (written in March 2013 --I still like it!)

 I repeat: these remain my ideas and are of academic interest to you only unless they can show you the way to find your own truth.

Don't accept anyone's ideas, including these written here, to mold and adjust what you find in your meditations.
What is your truth?

Arrogance is Bliss!!! 

(arrogance isn't bliss really -but you get the idea- find your own truth... arrogance maybe bliss -  perhaps everything is bliss!).

This method or approach has worked for me. The depression has gone and I have found Peace, blessed Peace. I was looking for Peace and answers for a long time and little did I know they were within me and who I am. I am Peace.

I will always be here though – here if you need me – should you ask – in this reality or any world that manifests I will be somewhere in an avatar always –I know that. I cannot fully embrace an “Enlightenment” that includes moving into a Nirvana or Land of Bliss without you with me. It’s hard to explain.

I write this as Paloma Porta. You cannot buy this book, you have read it, it’s free. I remain as an anonymous voice and not for profit: as such I feel it pays better respect to the message.

The message is all that is here. It is a message touched by Grace. It is from you to you.

For love.

Just love.

Paloma Porta

January 2014