Allowing an Awakening
Reality or Unreal? True self or False self? Meaning and Purpose or an Indifferent Universe? Can the real you either stand up or sit down? Does this matter? Who cares? I think it probable that most people, at one time or another dabble with questions such as these, and I suppose in one way or another they all boil down to God or No God...
As I tend toward the inevitable end of my life, these questions along with every conceivable answer themselves become relative: the questions asked by a socially-constructed-self will always reach conclusions which are likewise, socially-constructed... in a self-perpetuating circle of both falsehood and obedience... Long ago when I felt called to become a monk, I intuited that I would have impossible problems with obedience... so I took a different path: into the Catholic Worker Movement... a Soup Kitchen allowed for creative flexibility: I could be different with ease...
Still, that very ease was another socially-constructed-self! The "system" has always allowed for the different and weird: on the margins, unable to really or significantly affect culture... The Catholic Worker Movement proves the point: small, dedicated, bands open Soup Kitchens, Houses of Hospitality, print newspapers, etc. for years and years: Dorothy Day is likely to be declared a saint: and the system remains entrenched in privilege, profits, and power... consumerism is eating the Planet alive... and the churches are still in business...
There has to be another way! (And there is!)
The one work we should rightly undertake is eradication of the self. Could you completely forget yourself, even for just an instant, you would be given everything. -- Meister Eckhart
Of course, Eckhart is writing about the socially-constructed-self: the illusion that somehow we are separate from everything else in the Universe... We give the greater portion of our lives over to building our tower of independence: in quiet servitude of the systems of domination that have only one purpose, to mold us into happy little consumers and producers, soldiers and prostitutes, gleefully wrapped in a national flag, and as if drunk, clinging to a religion of salvation from a world we are destroying...
In the movie Dr. Strange, two wise women book-end the story, the first with this seemingly off-hand comment, "Steven, everything is about you." The second, the Ancient One, tells the same "It's not about you." Mystics of every faith (and of no particular faith) have long understood this -- by the sincerity of their practices: all pointing to the very same goal: getting out of the way: allowing for an awakening into the Really Real... That Saint Angela of Foligno could write "The world is pregnant with God" interests few... until now...
Philosopher and systems scientist, Ervin Laszlo, has summarized his studies in quantum physics with "Eight Cardinal Propositions": only two of which I'll reference here. The first is The cosmos is an infinite and eternal intelligence. And the second, The ultimate purpose of human existence is to consciously foster and further the transmission of the unifying, embracing, and all-encompassing intelligence of the cosmos into the universe... Words confuse or deceive, but free from the desire to manipulate, Lao-Tzu compiled the essence of the Tao which convey a way of life increasingly disinterested in artifice and instead, contentedly cultivates harmony and elegance, wherein the "I" simply, and quite naturally, dissolves into the Divine Pregnancy...
Turning once again to Meister Eckhart, we discover: What does God do all day long? He gives birth. From the beginning of eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth to the All... This Unconditioned Nature is without duality... Let me repeat: Unconditioned Nature is without duality. The "I" is like a shirt: we put it on, we take it off: we are child, youth, adult: we think this, we think that: we want this, we don't want that: clinging to the ego "I" of this and that, of now and then, and of me and mine is the deception that drives the suffering of the world... and all the while, on just the other side of despair, the Sun rises...
Dr. Laszlo merely articulates in language most useful for today's world, the eternal wisdom of the forest academies, of the desert caves, and hidden lofts of the mystics: the scientists of Ultimate Reality. Quarks are beyond our perception: so is truth: so, as we have been taught, we construct... while deconstruction in order to truly live is the Tao, the Buddha, and the Beatitude of the Christ Consciousness... The Hindu sages intuited that the Real Reality could best be described as Being-Consciousness-Bliss... If you really feel the need for an "I"... this is It... as for the rest, practice stepping aside, which is, after all, simply allowing for an awakening...
(More?)
Reality or Unreal? True self or False self? Meaning and Purpose or an Indifferent Universe? Can the real you either stand up or sit down? Does this matter? Who cares? I think it probable that most people, at one time or another dabble with questions such as these, and I suppose in one way or another they all boil down to God or No God...
As I tend toward the inevitable end of my life, these questions along with every conceivable answer themselves become relative: the questions asked by a socially-constructed-self will always reach conclusions which are likewise, socially-constructed... in a self-perpetuating circle of both falsehood and obedience... Long ago when I felt called to become a monk, I intuited that I would have impossible problems with obedience... so I took a different path: into the Catholic Worker Movement... a Soup Kitchen allowed for creative flexibility: I could be different with ease...
Still, that very ease was another socially-constructed-self! The "system" has always allowed for the different and weird: on the margins, unable to really or significantly affect culture... The Catholic Worker Movement proves the point: small, dedicated, bands open Soup Kitchens, Houses of Hospitality, print newspapers, etc. for years and years: Dorothy Day is likely to be declared a saint: and the system remains entrenched in privilege, profits, and power... consumerism is eating the Planet alive... and the churches are still in business...
There has to be another way! (And there is!)
The one work we should rightly undertake is eradication of the self. Could you completely forget yourself, even for just an instant, you would be given everything. -- Meister Eckhart
Of course, Eckhart is writing about the socially-constructed-self: the illusion that somehow we are separate from everything else in the Universe... We give the greater portion of our lives over to building our tower of independence: in quiet servitude of the systems of domination that have only one purpose, to mold us into happy little consumers and producers, soldiers and prostitutes, gleefully wrapped in a national flag, and as if drunk, clinging to a religion of salvation from a world we are destroying...
In the movie Dr. Strange, two wise women book-end the story, the first with this seemingly off-hand comment, "Steven, everything is about you." The second, the Ancient One, tells the same "It's not about you." Mystics of every faith (and of no particular faith) have long understood this -- by the sincerity of their practices: all pointing to the very same goal: getting out of the way: allowing for an awakening into the Really Real... That Saint Angela of Foligno could write "The world is pregnant with God" interests few... until now...
Philosopher and systems scientist, Ervin Laszlo, has summarized his studies in quantum physics with "Eight Cardinal Propositions": only two of which I'll reference here. The first is The cosmos is an infinite and eternal intelligence. And the second, The ultimate purpose of human existence is to consciously foster and further the transmission of the unifying, embracing, and all-encompassing intelligence of the cosmos into the universe... Words confuse or deceive, but free from the desire to manipulate, Lao-Tzu compiled the essence of the Tao which convey a way of life increasingly disinterested in artifice and instead, contentedly cultivates harmony and elegance, wherein the "I" simply, and quite naturally, dissolves into the Divine Pregnancy...
Turning once again to Meister Eckhart, we discover: What does God do all day long? He gives birth. From the beginning of eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth to the All... This Unconditioned Nature is without duality... Let me repeat: Unconditioned Nature is without duality. The "I" is like a shirt: we put it on, we take it off: we are child, youth, adult: we think this, we think that: we want this, we don't want that: clinging to the ego "I" of this and that, of now and then, and of me and mine is the deception that drives the suffering of the world... and all the while, on just the other side of despair, the Sun rises...
Dr. Laszlo merely articulates in language most useful for today's world, the eternal wisdom of the forest academies, of the desert caves, and hidden lofts of the mystics: the scientists of Ultimate Reality. Quarks are beyond our perception: so is truth: so, as we have been taught, we construct... while deconstruction in order to truly live is the Tao, the Buddha, and the Beatitude of the Christ Consciousness... The Hindu sages intuited that the Real Reality could best be described as Being-Consciousness-Bliss... If you really feel the need for an "I"... this is It... as for the rest, practice stepping aside, which is, after all, simply allowing for an awakening...
(More?)
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