7) The Great I AM in the Sky…

I was recently asked to write some more about post number 1) Why do you want to be Happy?

To begin at the beginning, man can never ‘find’ happiness in the world, or to put it another way, he can never find any lasting happiness in the world, because the world is not real.

OK, so it feels real enough, we all experience the dance of pain and pleasure, pleasure and pain…but the fact is, everything about this world that we live in is undeniably restricted by the laws of time and space. Modern man can scarcely think outside of these restrictions, and so his thinking becomes very limited also; ” Oh, I was born on such and such a time and date, and I can expect to live for this many years etc etc…”
Fair enough, these are very real notions, whatever is born, must die etc. But the Truth is, we were never born, and we will never die. All that we witness is just a mere apparition, our real nature is timeless and beyond space, thought and description. The world, us, our thoughts, emotions, feelings, doubts, concerns in fact everything that we see as part of our lives, all begin with a single thought. If all of our notions are traced back into ourselves, we can find that thought. A constant companion, creator of worlds, it gives us presence, identity and hides our real nature, it cloaks reality in the veil of consciousness, and misguides us unto death. That thought is I AM.

To reside in that realm of the I AM, to understand the witness state of our being at a human level, and then to go on even further to what is witnessing this I AM, this is where True Happiness is to be found. This is what we really are. This is where the puny concepts of time and space, desires or fears have no place. This is home.

Thankyou for your patience. To be continued…

6) Welcome Back!

Hello, after a brief 26 day unexpected break, back to the (hopefully) daily posts.

So, where to begin…

A very good place to always start is generally in SILENCE.  Now this doesn’t necessarily mean flouncing around in a dewy eyed “flowers and trees” mode, all will be well, God is great and will heal everything and make everyone better etc etc endless etc…

What i mean by starting in silence is to find the gap between your thoughts and stay there for as long as possible.  Now, depending on the level of conditioning and a lifetime of wrong habits and the quality of upbringing, as well as a multitude of other factors, the ease of maintaining the “thought-gap” will range from being nigh-on impossible, to positively easy.  However, no matter where you are on that range…IT IS NEVER ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE!

As with everything, practice makes perfect, and in time, it will become a fairly simple process to “key into” a zone of no thought.  At this point, it is important to understand the nature of The Witnessing Presence and become the presence behind your own eyeballs, as it were…this is really only the beginning on the spiritual ‘journey,’ but once it has become a natural part of your being (remembering regular daily practice!) the rest, in time, tends to fall into place quite beautifully.

I will end here for today, to give time for you to contemplate today’s short and sweet little sermon, but also becouse I’ve got a bit more Chinatown Wars to complete before I turn in for the time being.

Thankyou for your patience.  To be continued…

5) NOTHING IS SO CLEAR, AS A MOMENT OF CLARITY.

Good Morning.

4) Endless Apologies in a Guilt Free World!!!

And why not???

OK, I have been burning the candles at both ends today, so i’ll make this short…

The ego interrupts…God listens.

Kindly meditate on this in your silence today, and we shall explore the notion further, tomorrow. Goodnight and as always…

Thank you for your patience. To be continued…

3) Expanding Consciousness…

Hello, and welcome back. i sincerely hope you are enjoying our journey so far…

Yesterday evening, it was pointed out to me that there was rather a large gap between post number 1) Why do you want to be Happy? ; and post number 2) The world feels Real enough to me!!!  So, today, i thought i might expand a little on some of the concepts relating to yesterday’s topic – Consciousness, and thereby ‘fill the gap’ so to speak…

In my experience, people, and dare i say ‘Seekers’ in particular, tend to get rather confused about the term “Consciousness.” This in turn gives rise to all manner of nasty habits. The word itself loses its meaning and gets thrown around willy-nilly-vanilly until a point when you really don’t know what your talking about, or until the point when the ego is satisfied that whoever you’re talking too, has been given enough trash to believe that you really are some high and mighty “spiritual seeker”.

Phew!!

Now that i’ve created an insurmountable hurdle for myself, i can begin.

To begin right at the beginning, i would like you to try and remove all confusion, understanding or misunderstanding, faith, belief, opinions and frustrations from your system. Go for it, don’t worry, i’ll be waiting for you when you return. So if you need to go and make a Cup Of Tea, punch a pillow, tend to your tomatoe plants, or smoke something, by all means do so…

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OK, back already? Good, now let’s begin…

A Great Master once told me that Consciousness is an organism. An organism that serves God. Now if you have truly left all of your prior misconceptions at the doorstep, then i do not doubt for a moment that you will have had an immediate and intuitive, and therefore True understanding of the nature of Consciousness just by reading the top two lines of this paragraph. But stick around anyway, it could be fun…  :0

If you are still not too sure about Consciousness – Don’t Paniiiic!!! I intend to write today in a lighter manner, because i would very much like to clear up any confusion for you, once and for all. But do leave a “comment” if there is anything you would like me to explain again – the very nature of you and me is, after all, infinite patience!!!

I just have to go and have my evening meal, but as a nice robot once said “I’ll be back!“

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Mmmm, that was delicious. Thankyou

So, Consciousness is an organism. An organism that serves God. Now one could argue that that sounds just like any other organism on this planet, we are always told that Service to Man is Service to God, and that as humans this is our duty (sheesh, i really dislike that word!!! nevermind – it’s just a personal thing), incidentally, if you don’t believe in God, try substituting that word for something else, liked baked-potatoes, it really makes no difference, it really is just a word!!! In the realms of Advaita, language and words are (necessarily) limited, what is Unlimited, is the actualization of the words, the direct ‘experience‘, for want of another…er…word… (see what i mean?!?)

OK, Consciousness, Consciousness, Consciousness, mmmm, let’s try a different road…OK, i think this may just about work…

Imagine you are a chicken. No really, just try it for a second…

OK? – so now you are a chicken. Before long, the time comes when you have to lay an egg. So go on then, lay an egg…

no don’t worry, i’m not looking…

OK – you done? Good.

Now, you watch the egg, and before long, the egg hatches into a cute little easter bunny and …no wait, got that bit wrong, hang on…

Right, got it…

Now you watch the egg, and before long, the egg hatches into a cute little fluffy yellow chick, and you look upon it and go “Aaaaaah, isn’t she cute!” etc etc, now this is the important bit – you – a chicken, also think – THAT’S PART OF ME THAT IS…! (by all means, take some time at this point to fully absorb this point, because the next bit is equally, if not more important…

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As you – a chicken, watch this beautiful creation of yours, grow and develop into a little chicklet, and then into a naughty little teenaged chick with ASBO-worthy profanities coming out of its beak, you suddenly start seeing that this little chick is now becoming involved in a beautiful world of its own…you meet its new friends from the nursery-coop, and then shed a tear as you drop her off on her first day at secondary-coop, and before long, you are a proud and happy mummy chicken attending the graduation ceremony of your beautiful chick which is now a fully fledged chicken!!!

Just think, all that from a little ping-pong ball sized bit of protein.

Right. Now let’s try this…

That little ping-pong ball sized bit of protein is all of the known (and unknown – but we’ll not go into that right now…) universe. Everything that you can perceive of with the senses, memory, emotions, the world, the universe, and everything. It grows and changes, it responds automatically to various stimuli according to the laws of Nature, and it basically contains everything the mind can ever concieve.

And you – a chicken, and the parent of the little chick, is the Great Unmanifest, or God, or Shiva or any other word.

I would like to ask you to take a moment to absorb what you have just read, then re-read it, then re-re-read it, and then apply it to yesterday’s blog entry, paying particular attention to Sri Aurobindo’s quote at the bottom of the page.

Just one last thing to say, if you need a different take on any of these topics, then you may be interested to know that as soon as i have figured out what all the buttons mean on this blog dashboard, i shall place a reading list on the blog, of books that have helped me along the way (man, i luuuurve books!). However, i would like to emphasise one very important point. And i cannot emphasise this enough…

WORDS ARE ONLY POINTERS!

THEY ARE not A SUBSTITUTE FOR REALITY.

THEY ARE USEFUL IF, AND ONLY IF, YOU ARE FULLY PREPARED TO INVESTIGATE, QUESTION, UNDERSTAND, TURN THEM INSIDE-OUT AND UPSIDE DOWN, AND GO DEEP DEEPER DEEPEST INTO THE PLACES WHERE NO-ONE EVER WANTS TO GO BECAUSE OF CONCEPTUAL FEAR, LAZINESS, APATHY OR BECAUSE IT’S “NOT EASY”.

THEN, AND ONLY THEN, DO YOU HAVE ANY RIGHT TO SPEAK OF THE NATURE OF REALITY – AND THEN ONLY BECAUSE YOU HAVE DIRECT PERMISSION TO DO SO.

UNTIL THAT POINT, AND IT MOST DEFINATELY IS “UNTIL” – IT IS SOOOOO MUCH EASIER TO SIMPLY REMAIN SILENT.

Please Please Please do not turn into a pretentious “empty kettle”, prattling on and on about “God says this”, “God says that” and pretending you know what you are talking about! – it only enhances the suffering of this beautiful world. Maybe now, a few of you may see why.

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To end todays blog, i would like to leave you with an image from one of The Great Artists, whose images, for me personally are truly TIMELESSNESS itself. And if he would oblige me a small paraphrase…

“its only lines on a screen folks!“

2) The world feels real enough to me!!!

My dear sweet fellow, of course it does!!!

And this is because – you are on drugs. No seriously, you are simply intoxicated with the most powerful drug created by ‘man’.  It is called Consciousness, but for reasons of simplicity, we shall call it Consciousness.

Consciousness is a seed from which the entire universe is created. If you want to know who you are in Reality, you must go beyond Consciousness to find that you yourself have created Consciousness, and that the Real you is…well, we shall see.

But what is Consciousness, I mean, really?

Ahhh – if only i knew…well, i’ll give it my best shot. In Reality, the only thing that actually is, is the unknowable – cool eh? Now, the Great Unknowable, or God, Love, Happiness, Robert Crumb etc – for the purposes of this blog (good isn’t it?) we shall call the Great Unknowable the Unmanifested.  Now, the Unmanifested, in order to become known unto itself, has to objectify itself, in other words, it is not self-aware in the Original State, ie it remains the full potentiality, without form, beyond time and Absolutely absolute. In this Unmanifested state, there is no such thing as you, or I, or the world, or objects, or opinions – you get the picture…

So, the Unmanifested is that which simply is, prior to time itself, i have heard it described as “The birth of all births, and the death of all deaths” – how beautiful! Now, for no reason whatsoever, absolutely spontaneously, the Unmanifested becomes self-aware, in other words, the notion “I AM” arises, or “I IS” – if you prefer. As this notion arises, immediately, the process of objectivisation begins. By objectivisation, i mean the process of seeing things in duality, ie as ‘you’ and a separate ‘me’. Now, in order to function with this dualistic attitude, the Unmanifest (now having become self-aware and so beginning the process of manifestation and hence duality) needs a tool, yep you heard it right, A TOOL. And to bring us back to the main theme of todays blog, that tool is, you guessed it, Consciousness!

Oh dear, i’ve just accidentally gone and pressed a button, and the font’s gone funny, i have no idea how to change it back, so apologies if you find this gargantuan lettering a bit tooo much, oooooo! maybe if you put yourself about 3 foot away from the screen, it might feel ok, but then how would you scroll down to read the rest of this blog? Oh well, anyway, to continue…

Ummm – hey wow – it just spontaneously changed back!!! WOW – this blogging thing is well cool!!!

Anyway, where were we, or rather where are we? ah yes…Consciousness is a tool for the Unmanifested to objectify itself and therefore, if you like, to enjoy its very own nature!

In some cultures, this very process is known as “Lila”, or The Divine Play. Now it just so happens that i typed in “Lila” into Wikipedia for a proper Sanskrit translation for you lucky readers (all 4 of you!) and immediately came across this beautiful quote from the Great Indian Master – Sri Aurobindo, He refers to ‘Brahman’ which is essentially the Sanskrit term for the Unmanifest…

“Brahman is full of all perfections. And to say that Brahman has some purpose in creating the world will mean that it wants to attain through the process of creation something which it has not. And that is impossible. Hence, there can be no purpose of Brahman in creating the world. The world is a mere spontaneous creation of Brahman. It is a Lila, or sport, of Brahman. It is created out of Bliss, by Bliss and for Bliss. Lila indicates a spontaneous sportive activity of Brahman as distinguished from a self-conscious volitional effort. The concept of Lila signifies freedom as distinguished from necessity.”

And I feel that this is as good a place as any to end this particular blog, but don’t worry, if it is God’s Will, or Cosmic Law if you prefer(a fairly decent topic to talk about in its own right, in my humble understanding), i may come along and place a few more words later today, if not, certainly tomorrow, ok?, Ummm… Hello?…  Is there anybody out there?…

Thankyou for your patience. To be continued…

1) Why do you want to be Happy?

So lets start with this eternal question…

i) Is it indeed possible?

ii) What is Happiness anyway??

iii) Assuming there is such a thing, how do I get it???

OK, so now that we’ve got the fundamentals sorted, lets proceed.  Happiness is possible, and i’m not talking about the happiness that has an opposite – in sadness or despair, i mean REAL Happiness, that has no antidote, is deep and strong enough to even outlast the human-body-lifespan.

To jump to point iii) there is simply no way to get Happiness.  So those of you who are looking for a quick fix, you may be better off with a dose of corrie or emmerdale, (NB – avoid Eastenders AT ALL COSTS!!! – it will sap your energy and your will to live quicker than the time it takes to destroy an Amazonian rainforest)…

The reason i say this is because Happiness is not a thing. A thing, an object;  can be acquired. True Happiness is not, never was, and in no way shape or form ever will be, just mere fodder for the acquisitive nature of (so-called) modern man.

Secondly, a more fundamental reason why the question “how do i get Happiness” is so incredibly absurd, is because, and this may require a 3 second delay to get your head around it…you cannot get Happiness – because you are it already. Remove all doubt from your consciousness (if necessary take 5 seconds, oh heck even 5 hours…).  Please be assured, that your true fundamental nature, without all the chasing money, drugs (including booze and Clarityn), women, men and control, is simply HAPPINESS   !

To expand on this, let’s reflect for a moment on why modern man seeks Happiness in the world. Now without coming across as all alarmingly deep and meaningful, modern man seeks Happiness because he is simply unhappy!  Ahhh – but you just said that man cannot get Happiness because Happiness is his very nature – quite so, but i’m talking about Happiness, with an capital ‘H’, not the mere fleeting happiness (note small ‘h’) which disappears as soon as you’ve parked the brand new £150,000 Aston in the garage. – This kind of happiness is not even worth having, in my humble understanding, because it doesn’t last. What’s the point in busting your skull for a fleeting moment of plastic happiness that vanishes the next time your plans get frustrated?

Basically, man can never ‘find’ Happiness in the world, and this is where it does start to get a bit deep…because the world is not Real.

Thankyou for your patience. To be continued…