Spiritual Philosophy

Why the brain needs to be kept quiet [mindfulness]

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Personal evolution beyond an egocentric automated way of being can be explained very succinctly. It simply means letting Soul take over control.

The trick is to accept that the only way that’s ever going to happen is by us hitting the Pause button of our much glorified brain i.e. to pause the unsolicited thoughts it keeps generating and spinning out like the air-light candy floss that spins out of the pan to glue itself on to the stick & … volumize.

Anxiety from this & about that = thoughts

If I do this now & that I will have this & that later = thoughts

Fear of this & that = thoughts

What if this & what if that = thoughts

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this & that = thoughts

Why the f… did this happen = thoughts

If I had done this & that = thoughts

These loose threads become into our awareness totally randomly.

We do not bring them on consciously: True or False?
They are not a part of an active problem-solving session based on concrete evidence: True or False?
There is nothing ‘intellectual’ about such thoughts: True or False?

Each flurry of thoughts is produced by whichever bit of our ego is constantly fretting about not being appreciated enough or respected enough = not being LOVED enough.
Just as our lungs do the breathing for us and saliva keeps forming so we can swallow and our liver filters to detox all by itself, for all intense and purposes our brain is structured/conditioned to generate a perpetual flurry of random thoughts.

A mind-over-matter approach will not bypass her activity anymore than a leopard can change her spots.

Thing is: it’s up to us, persona-in-charge, to deliberately hit the *pause* button again and again and again – many times daily – and ‘come up for air’, as the expression goes.

If we could improve our performance at hitting Pause – just imagine how different our work-home-holiday-family-love-friendship-civic relationships would be!
Just imagine how different a person each one of us would be!

Spiritual Philosophy

Things happen for a reason. Really?

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Picture this: On a lovely late afternoon stroll, you are walking along on a hilly suburban sidewalk, already planning your evening at home. Absent-mindedly, you cross strips of grass and the concrete slabs of your neighbors’ driveways when suddenly … the brakes on a parked truck give up.
Caught unawares, you are unable to avoid being squashed by the runaway vehicle.
Major trauma t the head, you die.
Your *loved ones*reaction might be:
a) The bastard who did this will have to pay!
b) Why is this happening to me?
c) That has ruined my life.
d) Why me?
e) Shit happens. Life is totally random.
f) There is no god.
g) Things happen for a reason – they’ve seen Kung Fu Panda.

Po Panda’s wisdom notwithstanding, things do happen for a reason. But without a true understanding of karma and reincarnation …. what *grief-soothing*reason can be there possibly be?

Mystic Musings

Ego dips_ soul dims [what soul is to ego]

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Question: how many ‘good’ souls are there in a stadium seating 80,000, knowing that Hiltler, Ted Bundy, Albert Hamilton Fish, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Andrea Yates, Idi Amin, Polpot, Myra Hindley, Barry Loukaitis and Beverley Allit are present?
—————-
Our ubiquitous culture of Me & Mine Come First notwithstanding, I have come to understand that the cosmic plan for each of us in this, as in all previous lifetimes, is simply to edit our karmic balance sheet.

It is our lot to amend some of the karma inherited from our soul’s previous incarnations along with the karma we have added to it since our teens.
The only way to edit our karmic balance is to make an active peace by truly moving on, processing and accepting from the heart – not just from the lips – whatever it is that has pushed our buttons.

I also believe that each one of us is a ‘bodysuit’ of flesh and fluids animated by a soul from which comes our ability to occasionally activate higher attributes such as genuine kindness, unconditional love, honesty and, even at times, selfless altruistic behavior.

Conscience is the voice of Soul. She uses conscience to prod us to do the right thing and to haunt our quiet moments when we resist.
In short, it is from our soul that we get our humanity.

Everyone’s soul, being divine energy, is always pure.

Knowing that our ego is an energy as neutrally balanced as any weighing scale, it is neutral by nature.

Our soulful nature sits at the high tilt-end of the ego while our needs and cravings and our myriad of physical and emotional must-haves sit at the dipping end.
Anyone described metaphorically as a dark soul, a lost soul or tormented, cruel and misguided soul or even born soul-less, would be more accurately described as one who has been unable to keep Ego steady – one who has allowed one side of the Ego scale to tip lower than it should have.

Should any metaphoric epithet be needed to describe anyone, then … dark ego, lost ego or tormented, misguided ego – ‘dipping-end of ego’ by a myriad of other names – would be more accurate.
Even ‘happy little soul’ only describes the reaction of a ‘body-suit’ whose dipping-end ego-needs are temporarily satisfied.

If, at the high end of our ego, soul has figuratively been lulled to sleep from a systemic ‘Major Tom To Ground Control,’ soul-to-body suit dysfunction, the dipping end of our ego never sleeps.
The dipping end of the ego thrives on sensorial satisfaction as much as a toddler usually thrives on any sort of gratification. That end of our ego is always busy, buzzing, fretting, imagining, freaking out and demanding utter satisfaction according to its endless self-generated perception of needs.

When utter satisfaction is not obtained easily, ego dips further and we, mere bodysuits, experience a number of setbacks. When Ego interprets such setbacks as failures, intended disrespect, intended humiliation, mind-thoughts complicate matters. They make us anxious, unpleasant, dictatorial and irrational. Some of us become ‘crazy’ from this that and the other.

Quite forgetting all the positive aspects of our personal circumstances, daily, by the thousands, some of us become sick or gravely ill while some of us actually die from a multitude of spin-out consequences stemming from ego-triggered knee-jerks.
Ego stirs from deep within our energy field – our aura – every time one of our buttons is pushed and it is a darned shame that our bodysuit, our soul’s vehicle in this lifetime, is a suit of many, many buttons.

Perhaps swimming against the tide, I believe that our soul –everyone’s soul – however pure and divine she may be, is a prisoner inside our body suit.

I understand this is the case because most of us alive today do not seem at all interested in connecting with Soul. In fact, most of us, though we readily agree that, yes, we all have a soul [except for psychopaths, we add quickly] we seldom wonder about her function. We seldom care enough about her existence to try to better understand her role in our life – in this lifetime – as in all previous ones.

Sometimes, one’s soul is said to be the instigator of nasty deeds, in which case, she’s said to be a dark, black, vengeful soul– all attributes of the ego-persona, not of the soul.
We mostly only mention Soul by name when it is said that she has departed from the body of a deceased person. Misty- eyed and naively self-important, we give Soul, divine entity, our human blessing and wish her well on her journey or we ask god to intervene in her favor with a “Please God, look after his/her soul.” Odd concern, really, seeing as most of us had never cast a thought towards the departed’s soul anymore than to our own.

What folks who believe in god should say instead is, “Please, God, forgive his/her the many ego-dips.”

Long story made short, though, clearly, it is Soul’s energy that keeps us alive [not any sort of medical intervention] until our karmic time is up and not one second longer, I imagine that she has, in all likelihood, given up on us a long, long time ago. Or she would have, if she were not pure energy.

I imagine Soul curled up, sound asleep from the sheer, dreary boredom of it all. I imagine her thus whiling the time away till her next incarnation. I imagine her nursing the hope that THAT next one, finally, will be Awake and Aware enough to step firmly on the Path, the Path of genuine spirituality.
I imagine Soul hoping that, in a real and sustained manner, her new vehicle for another karmic round will be strong-willed enough to begin amending some of the stacked-on karma accumulated in his/her astral field rather than invite tests, more tests, more challenges and more struggles, as does the one struggling underwater with a huge net of circumstances who refuses to be guided from above.

What also I think is that our soul, pure/divine energy, has already worked that on the whole, bar a few rare moments of soul-stirring awe and/or ‘selfless deeds’, most of which we cannot explain because they were quite un-intended, we are not tuned to her channel.

We don’t catch her beam.
We don’t hear her.
We hardly ever think of her.
Why, she’s not a god. She’s not a saint. She’s not even an angel.
We don’t pray to her or ask for her support.
We don’t perform any ritual for her – not that any are needed.
We don’t even offer her a flower.
As far as most of us are concerned, our soul is just there, hanging somewhere above our head, fuzzily defined, even in religious dogma.
As if mistaking her for our wily ego weren’t enough, even in sacred texts and in modern guides to spirituality, Soul is often called Mind or Heart, even Ego. Under this mistaken identity, we hold her responsible for our ego’s dips, quirks, knee-jerks and foibles. That’s for the nicer ones of us.

Depending on how we have been managing our karma in any lifetime and the roles, over the millennia some of us have confirmed on our blueprint of life, a huge number of souls have been held responsible for the huge number of atrocities their body suit-persona have been committing in response to a number of misguided Me & Mine Come First dips of the otherwise neutral scale that is our ego.
Sometimes, someone or other says ‘Bless your soul’. Sometimes, it is meant benignly. At other times, it is meant sarcastically or spitefully.
We are harangued with much conviction to ‘Save our soul, halleluiah’ but Soul, being divine energy … is quite safe already. It is we, mere bodysuits with a damming inability to keep our Ego scale steady, who are not safe.

And we are told that chicken soup is good for the soul and that good friends provide us with soul-warming reassurance, that some locations are soul-less but that some songs are soul-ful.
We-ell, after all of that, if Soul is not truly bored-asleep, then she must be rolling on the floor laughing.
Yes? No? Maybe?
—————–
And about the question How many ‘good’ souls are there in a stadium seating 80.000, knowing that Hiltler, Ted Bundy, Albert Hamilton Fish, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Andrea Yates, Idi Amin, Polpot, Myra Hindley, Barry Loukaitis and Beverley Allit are present?
The answer has to be ……….
…… 80,000, right?
Seriously: there have never been any Soul-Less Bastards –men, women or children – alive on planet Earth, nor can there ever be.

Spiritual Philosophy

An Eye for an Eye. Love Thy enemy. Palestinian Intifata. In Tolerance We Are Safer [part4/4]

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I am not in the least interested in any ritualized religions, but I do keep an eclectic bank of quotes and on the topic of ‘duress’, I found a sound byte attributed to Jesus in Matthew 5:38-42, NIV. “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,’ he said. “But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”
Uh, what? Love your enemy? Turn the other cheek and open the flood gates to all and sundry? Go religious? Let the bad guys take over without a fight? OMG! You gotta be cra-zy!
Over two thousand years ago already, Jesus was issuing us with the warning that, because like attracts like, responding in kind to anyone or anything ‘evil’ [which for all intents and purposes includes anything we find unpleasant frightening] will keep otherwise good folks from enjoying the deep sleep of the Just.
What I think is really crazy is that even persons who see themselves as religious don’t get it either.
These ‘good’ people don’t get that as long as they talk about the other, any other, with harsh words, with anger and hatred in their voice, they are magnetizing more of the same – separately and collectively.

Even more attractive to those who mouth canonical wisdom each time they visit their temple, church, mosque of synagogue is the much misunderstood eye for an eye that, these days, passes for restorative … justice a.k.a. man-made retribution.
“You gouge out my eye. I gouge out your eye and then the other, if I can” – is the model we all understand and many more of us would add action to words, if we weren’t law-abiding citizens – afraid of the lawful consequences.

Personally, I prefer to think that ‘an eye for an eye’ is not about a barbaric tit for tat, but about karmic retribution – retribution tabulated by whichever entity one feels is in charge of the universe, the name and shape of this entity being totally immaterial.
‘An eye for an eye’ suggests that karma is unerring.

Karma encapsulates all our deeds and all our thoughts and all our words for they, too, carry their own energy. Like attracts like. Though this karmic payback is often paid back in kind, it can boomerang back to the sender in a different guise but no matter, in essence, it will still be the same old an eye for eye and a tooth for a tooth. A knife attracts a bullet. A bomb somewhere attracts an explosion elsewhere. A punch attracts a counter punch. A hurtful word attracts another hurtful word. A slur attracts a bigger slur.
Approximately 150,000 people died in Hiroshima and some 75,000 died in Nagasaki – mostly all civilians.
From 1969 to 1973 the US secretly bombed Cambodia just to cut off Viet-Cong supply lines along the Ho Chi Minh Trail from Laos, gutting deep into the populated areas of central Cambodia.

The number of bombs dropped on this non-combatant country was equal to that dropped on Japan during all of WWII. More than 500,000 Cambodians died. A famine ensued as a result of the bombed-out agricultural industry of this otherwise very fertile country. More deaths – children included, of course. With the country on its knees, the scene was then set for the invasion of the Khmer Rouge and most of us know what happened then.
The United States of America was not an alien entity from out of space. The bombs were made by American people. The pilots dropping the bombs were American people. The orders were given by the American President. Congress was made up of American people. The members of the Republican Party standing by their President were American. Then the madness stopped. Peace. Handshakes. Rebuild. Easy. Injustice was perpetrated but was there any amending, any repairing from the collective American heart?

Putting aside for a moment human logic and political ‘common sense’, karmically speaking, why would a country, any country, a huge collection of people, think that they can walk away from such horror and not expect a ‘justice adjustment’ one day or another?

When one understands the concept of karma correctly, Judgement Day is every day. The tabulation is ongoing. And which country, large or small, does not have a number of skeletons packed up to the rafters?
The problem for us humans in the most advanced of all civilizations, is that we fail to perceive the invisible link we keep creating between cause and effect. Is it amnesia, ignorance or blind self-absorption?
Be that as it might, this tendency does serve us well in the sense that it renders us unable to feel any sense of accountability for much of what eventually befalls us. And this seems to be the preferred status quo.

Another illustration of the concept of ‘an eye for an eye’ in a modern political context is to consider the current festering barb in Israel’s side. Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist group that has become the current focus for aggressive resistance was, back in the ‘90’s, a welcome foil for Yitzhak Rabin’s government against Yasser Araft’s PLO. Short-sightedly, the Israeli government had no qualms subtly promoting the group, thus pitting brothers against brothers. Currently, the Hamas and its followers are planning a 3rd intifada [shake up] against Israel. The last 2nd intifada that spanned from 2000 to 2008 took 6000 Palestinian lives plus that of 64 foreigners plus that of1100 Israelis while wounding another 6000.
When we prefer to go on believing in the randomness of life’s events – and death – it must be because it suits us to do so.

And where am I going with this?
While I waited for the light to turn green, earlier this afternoon, the image of a little Muslim boy shooting imaginary bullets at passers-by pasted itself over that of a little blond boy simply doing boy-things on a sidewalk. And already then, I knew, knew, knew, that the only thing we can, separately and collectively, do is to – at the very least – remain healthily, positively, caringly neutral when it comes to anyone’s attempts at enrolling us in their cycle of fear, envy, anger, resentment, hatred – and action.

No, we cannot roll back the snowball we have pushed down the mountain. It will go on triggering avalanches that will trigger more explosions all the long way down till it reaches the bottom. There will be many, many more casualties along the way because the mountain from which we have launched our large snowball is a very, very high mountain. But provided that, separately and collectively, we don’t go preparing any more snow balls – provided we don’t even go to the top of that mountain anymore, slowly, slowly the avalanches will stop and so will the explosions.

For my part, next time I find myself walking through the groups of new migrants chatting noisily in foreign languages in my suburb, instead of hurrying along, I will sit on a park bench and I will casually observe the coming and going of these exotic people. I will reflect on the reality that many of them will have survived a life I would never wish for myself, not for anyone I love, not even for the neighbors I have never met.

I will casually observe these newcomers as they go about their business with the words, in the tone and in the manner that are culturally familiar to them. I will practise thinking about them neutrally. They just are. They just are like everyone else in all the other streets of my suburb in the city where I live somewhere in Australia. They are a part of my world. I will practice feeling empathy because empathy comes from the heart and silently, imperceptibly, slowly but surely like attracts like.
Actually, why wait till I have to go to that part of town to start practicing this calm acceptance of What- Is?
I can begin right now in the comfort of my own den.

Spiritual Philosophy

Law of Attraction & Justice served _ In tolerance We Are safer [part3/4]

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What’s amazing is that in spite of millennia-worth of accumulated and recurring proofs of this fact, we, modern men and women, officious worshippers of democracy and justice for all in the guise of human rights, child and animal protection acts, in their myriad of forms, we participate by proxy – anonymously – in the same random manner as the ‘others’ who overtly appear more callous.

We do that by giving our politicians very specific mandates when we vote for them. What we tell them is this: “Keep out the bad guys and adjust the budget so that I get more money from the government than I’m getting now. Do that any which way you want, provided you stay under the radar.” And we send our politicians, golem-like, on these tracks of action/reaction and relative justice while we deflect personal responsibility by staying safely tucked behind their coat tails – ready to leap out of the shadows and point an accusing finger at the first whiff of an imminent fiasco – any topic will do – and cry, “It wasn’t me! It was the politicians.”

Honest question: Why are we collectively, in the home, in the workplace, in our streets and in our politics still following such ancient, tribal, primary patterns? Why after WWII, haven’t the good men and women of those days, collectively, slowly, moved to set up a model of global-cohabitation aiming to have a different code of ethics in place … by now?

Honest question: are we faring better in these areas than our great-grandparents, our grandparents and our parents who have failed their world and ours?

If we are not faring better on the scoreboard, then, could it be that ongoing tits for tats and ‘Go better!’ and ‘Bring it on!’ responses, regardless of the financial cost and regardless of the human cost on all sides are simply what come naturally to us and, what the heck, if it’s natural, why suppress it?

It is true that wars and international discord do keep bevies of diplomats fully, if not necessarily, gainfully employed. It is true that the weapons industry does put milk and honey on many a table. And it is true that, generally speaking, any sort of societal/cultural mismanagement of emotional responses to perceived ‘injustice’ does keep a huge cohort of civil servants, doctors, nurses, lawyers, social workers, psychologists, self-help gurus and jail wardens also in their jobs – alongside by a huge section of the media.

Serious question: could it be said that envy, hate, anger, fear and resentment do, to a considerable extent, fuel our economy?

And then what?
I remember my mother telling me, when I was a child, that if something didn’t work one way, like a key not turning in a lock, I should remember to turn it the other way. Sound advice it was, indeed. And so, if the general consensus is that hatred, fear and resentment will never bring about any type of satisfying resolution to any sort conflict because these energies attract similar energies as effectively as two poles of a magnet jump at each other, then the only other way to turn ‘this’ key is towards the opposite pole – towards genuine acceptance, towards making an active inner peace in regards to that ‘other’, whoever that other happens to be.

Good news is that we don’t have to hug that other person. It is safe to agree that the power of hugs just as the healing power of making love are both hugely over-rated when it comes to conflict resolutions.
We don’t even have to shake their hand, as cantankerous school children are asked to do to show a supposed heartfelt softening of attitude.
We don’t have to do any of these things because an honest inner peace is also active energy.
Like attracts like, as effectively as two poles of a magnet jump at each other.

The way to alter the energy of envy, fear, hatred and resentment is to try very hard to not respond in kind, while dodging blows – figurative ones as well as literal ones. The key is also to not suffer anything under duress. Accepting anything under duress stands at the opposite side of accepting from a heartfelt inner calm – and duress will NEVER work.

Spiritual Philosophy

Peace, Truce and Palestinian Uprising – In Tolerance We Are Safer [part2/4]

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Killing is, arguably, the act of terminating one’s life out of fear, envy, anger or blind-hatred. In regards to the murder of ‘innocent people’, why are most of us fuzzy when it comes to the 16,000 people in the United States alone who are murdered every year? Why do we lose sight of the fact that 1,500 children under the age of 18 make up this tally and that the murderers of all these ‘innocent American people’ are not androids who come from some obscure planet and they don’t come from any vengeful foreign land, either. The killers are most often born and bred locally and, presumably, at least a couple of people in America have loved each one of them.

Honest question: Has Justice ever been blind?

It seems safe to say that ‘if’ she ever was, she is no longer as blind as she used to be. After all, aren’t ‘injustice perpetrated’ and ‘justice served’ mere constructs assembled through the lens of the proverbial beholder?

Many times daily, in order to protect some people in the name of justice, others are killed in the name of justice. A blatant example of that happened in a recent airstrike on the home of a son of Gaddafi, in Tripoli, where NATO forces killed his youngest son and three of his grandchildren. Which brings to mind the endless rounds of peace treaties involving the US, Israel and various leaders of the Palestinians. There have been many handshakes and many tabloid pictures and many short-lived cease-fires.

Together, they have synergized into the Fence of Separation that snakes for miles and miles protecting Israeli citizens from suicide bombers and isolating the west bank people from ‘real’ Israelis. A generation of children has been growing in the shadow of that barrier that is more formidable than the Berlin wall – also with its own checkpoints – without ever coming in contact with Israelis who are not soldiers. In short, the only Israelis they come in contact with are the ones who embody their oppression.

That generation of young Palestinians never see a Jewish father who is not a soldier, a Jewish mother who is not as soldier. They never see a Jewish toddler, a Jewish teenager or Jewish grandparents. It is not hard to guess that the sentiments that permeate this ‘petri dish’ situation can only be helplessness, anger and resentment at ‘injustice’ suffered by millions of innocent Palestinians who, like their counterparts on the other side of the wall, only want to get on with their lives and keep their family safe.

And again, where am I going with this?

Sifting through the millennia in all corners of the global world what seems obvious is that no lasting, healthy peace, no heart-felt understanding has ever come out of any relationship in which the protagonists acted out of fear, out of resentment, out of anger, out of envy or out of hatred.

Perceived injustice and justified retribution have always triggered animosity, regardless of the age, sex, creed, race of the protagonists – and regardless of the bone of contention. Envy always begets resentment which always begets anger which begets hatred and though we still pretend to the contrary, in our heart of hearts, we know that no amount of diplomacy or deterrent can ever dissolve these emotions, once they become engrained. Some prefer to cut to the chase and attempt time and time again to annihilate entire populations in one way or another. And still today, the word ‘annihilate’ is the rally cry of many millions.

Unfortunately, nothing can annihilate any blend of fear, envy, resentment and anger.
That blend can be forced underground, but it cannot be eradicated – not by bombs, not by solitary confinement, not by racial slurs any more than by cartoons, graffiti and rude gestures. The thing is that though not one of these strategies can stem the flow of hatred and separation, they all work as powerful billows fanning the flames of separation, of us against them and the mirror-image… them against us.