We Are Dreaming we are Alivesss

'This blog is composed of perspectives on the visible apparati and the invisible forces that conspire to create the circumstances in which you live.......'

There’s something I’ve wanted to talk about for a long time and I think it keys right into why we should be unfailingly positive in the face of these ‘interesting times’. This body that houses us here is a coffin and we are asleep inside of it. We wake up when we die and... I should add that some of us wake up inside this coffin before we die.

Because we have a body, we are dreaming. We are asleep and we are dreaming the dreams of flesh. A part of us knows that we are dreaming and in some cases it struggles to wake us up. Only death- of some kind- can awaken us. Once one is awakened that person begins to walk in an opposite direction to the world and attention is needed not to run into the sleepwalkers you are moving through.

The medium of understanding for the sleepwalkers are the senses. The senses are like five horses hitched to a chariot or carriage. We hold the reins in our hands but because we are dreaming we are not paying attention to where we are going and this is how our vehicle comes to go off the road so often and this is what causes nightmares. In life, which is not life, you probably call these nightmares something else because when you are dreaming, one thing is certain; no one will admit that they are dreaming. They insist they are wide awake.

Someone asked me about ‘the one mind’. This person had the idea that the one mind is insane because of the state of the world we live in. My first thought was that this person doesn’t understand the nature of the one mind. The one mind is like an ocean which is inhabited by billions of fish. We... via our assumption of a separated, personal mind swim around in this ocean with the idea that we are independent of it. However, if you pull any of us out of the water we will die. It is true that whole schools of fish can go insane. It is true that portions of the ocean can become polluted by the bad behavior of some of the fish or because of some accident which is usually the result of some ignorant action on the part of one or more of the fish. But;

Even if the whole ocean became polluted and all of the fish died, the ocean would still be there, hosting whatever life forms remained to live in the murk. We come and go in the one mind but the one mind remains. We come and go for the same reason we go to sleep and wake up again each morning. Because we imagine ourselves to be separated from the one, we also separate the world outside of us in a variety of ways and we measure its progression with something called ‘time’.

Let us think of ourselves as one of many types of light bulbs or light fixtures. There are a great many varieties. Let us think of electricity as the force of the one mind that lights us up and animates us. Electricity is a single force yet it has a wide span of applications. It can cool and heat. It can do all kinds of things. I understand that we have yet to develop the technology to be able to capture the force of a single lightning bolt. Perhaps I am wrong but... imagine how many lightning bolts there are. Consider that this electricity penetrates the furthest regions of this incomprehensibly vast universe, composes it and is also apart from it as well and you get some idea... maybe... of the power and presence of this one mind.

They say matter cannot be created or destroyed. You might consider, in this context, the difference between kinetic and potential energy and if you get the point you will see proof positive that we don’t actually die... we go somewhere else ...we turn into something else but... we don’t die. We just change. If you could change whenever needed in every circumstance required you would find, as the Bible says that, “some will not taste death.”

The problem with dreaming is that you are contained within the dream and so, everything outside of the dream seems to be a dream when, in some cases it is more real than anything the dream contains. It takes constant and persistent effort to wake up. It is the rare individual for whom this is the most compelling of needs. A master once gave an example to a student who asked him how much intensity one should put into striving for realization. The master said that he should submerge himself in water and hold his breath and that when he could not hold it any longer that this was the state he should be in regarding realization.

It has been said by many teachers in many times and places that the purpose of physical incarnation is spiritual progress. Although there are places where one can reincarnate outside of the physical, such as the Amitabha Buddha’s Western Pure Land, our spiritual progress takes place here because this is where the circuits get wired for the electricity to flow in the direction of intention. You don’t go anywhere that you are not already at and Heaven begins where your feet touch the ground. What you achieve here is where you are when you go.

You must accomplish it here. If you understood what was involved in dying and being born over and over, I assure you that you would have no other thoughts on your mind but self-realization. We are all of us, to different degrees, living in a hallucination. The power of Maya and the dream-web is very great; the greater the materialism of the age the greater the power.

Everything is actually backwards and upside down from the way we understand it. When a baby is born it sees things upside down and this is one of the difficulties it has to surmount in learning to walk. All of us learned to walk and it was a great accomplishment. We learned a language and all sorts of things more rapidly than we do now and this is something we should consider because we have lost something. This is another meaning that can be attributed to what Christ said about how we must become as a little child to enter the kingdom of Heaven.

In Heaven we are impersonal. There is no striving against each other there and that is what makes it Heaven... along with a few other benefits. Hell is the isolation of the self in a fire of unfulfilled desire. That lake of fire is a lake of desire and it is also the magnet that draws you once again into physical form.

There is nothing important here. Saving your life is not important. It doesn’t even belong to you and you can’t save it anyway. The person you are isn’t even real because of the identification with personality as the enduring entity. The personality is a stained glass window through which the light shines. It is the house and not the life within. Our concern for survival here is as ludicrous as our vanity in our relentlessly aging appearance. We see signs all the time that there is more to life than the pursuit of the senses and the appetite but we can’t seem to make the connection. It’s all coincidence but... coincidence is merely the moments when we are spotting the consistency in the marvelous tapestry of life.

Find some kind of practice and engage it. Let it be what you do when you are doing everything else. In some traditions they suggest offering everything you do to the divine. Others suggest operating as if you were the divine in everything you do. Some suggest practicing the presence of God and some suggest engaging in unceasing prayer. There’s a ‘real’ system for everyone and you won’t discover anything more important in this dreaming life than what that system will introduce you to. Remember what Paramahansa Yogananda said. “If you don’t look for God in the springtime of your life, he won’t be there in the winter.”

Visible sings: ♫ I Am Alive ♫
'I Am Alive' is track no. 8 of 12 on Visible's 2007 album 'Almost A Capella'
Lyrics (pops up)

Karma, the Gift that Keeps on Givingsss

'This blog is composed of perspectives on the visible apparati and the invisible forces that conspire to create the circumstances in which you live.......'

Talking about Karma seems to have brought up a lot of different commentary along with some amusing moments. So we’re going to talk a little more about Karma today and see if we can’t find a wider perspective to replace our narrow subjective takes and possibly rise above what we wish things were and try to find some kind of a comfort zone in the way things are; keeping in mind that the way things ‘really’ are may also be something we are missing. The way things are is not necessarily the way things are.

Today I went into town on some business with my trusty companion, Poncho Moonlight in the passenger seat. He doesn’t wear his seat belt, I do. Coming into town, I saw a dog walking by the side of the road. I had seen this same dog a few days earlier and noted how gaunt she was; ribs clearly defined and looking beaten and bedraggled. I wanted to stop and feed her but the circumstances weren’t good. First of all, I had to get somewhere within a pressing time frame and the location of the dog, for pulling over and attending to it, was not good.

Afterwards, I discovered, since things went far more smoothly than they usually do down here, that I would have had the time. I thought about the dog now and then and today, there she was in another inconvenient place. I was approaching the roundabout into town so I pulled into the V between where cars enter and come off at the direction I was coming from. This is one of the cool things about Italy. People park anywhere they want to. You have to see it to believe it. The Italians aren’t like everybody else; sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes not so much; like when you’re trying to take care of some kind of official business.

I crossed the street and poured out some food for the dog in a driveway while she watched me. It seemed like she’d had pups recently because her dugs were hanging down or... she just may have had so many that that is where they were now. She was skeletal but also of that breed that tends toward thin anyway but... this dog was in bad shape no matter how you parse it. I left what would be a normal portion for a dog of that size and that was all that was in the bag anyway. I thought of getting the other bag out and leaving more but... I operate nearly all of the time off of intuition and so... off I went. As I passed that place on my return I saw that the dog was gone and half of the food was still there.

Perhaps the dog is dying. She didn’t look good. You couldn’t get much lower than this dog in the pecking order. Here is this member of the Devic Realm, a noble friend to humanity, with centuries beyond remembering of tradition and history reduced to terrible circumstance. No one is going to adopt this dog. I’m not the dog wrangler that Susanne is so I don’t have her deft touch with these creatures. Should I have tried to put her in my car and take her home? Can I take all these dogs, that I see wandering the streets, back to my house? You can see a variety of karmas here.

This dog has no friends, nowhere to stay and gets mounted by anyone who wants to every time she goes into heat. Here in Italy, as in Spain and certain other locations, people will take a pet for the summer and then just turn it loose on the streets when the season ends. Sometimes they just don’t want their dog anymore. I guess there are a lot of reasons with zero moral justification. I can’t imagine the mindset that would take in an animal that depends on you for everything and who gives unreservedly in return... I just can’t imagine abandoning a responsibility taken for another living thing with such a callous disregard.

I can’t imagine raping a child. I can’t imagine gunning down women and children. I can’t imagine trafficking in human beings. I can’t imagine defrauding people or beating my consort. I can’t imagine starting wars for economic profit. There are a lot of things that I just wouldn’t do but the same cannot be said for everyone.

Yes... there are people who do hideous things. Some of them do it out of ignorance and there are some who do it, knowing full well that it is wrong -and who do it for the sheer joy of doing evil. Yes... there are creatures like this. It has been said that, “what goes around comes around”. It can also be said that we come around too. We come around and around and around for as long as the need may be.

It has been said by some number of people far wiser than I that a human birth is a very special thing. It is a remarkable opportunity and it doesn’t happen often. You would do well to tremble as you read those words. You would do well to strive hard for all your days remaining. You would do well to do good at every opportunity and to repent and ask for forgiveness when you find that you are in error. You would do well to put away your pride in yourselves and your vain and insignificant accomplishments. You would do well not to imagine that you know anything at all.

Where is it that you think you are? What are this planet and this form in which you move? This planet is a planet of elements constantly at war with each other... within you and without you. This is a place of atonement and the key to understanding Job One is at-one-ment. Hidden within the language are a great many answers. Hidden within you are all the answers. If you do not seek you will not find.

Let us look at that Tibetan wheel again. This world is an intermediary zone between the worlds below and the worlds above. This is not the only world by any stretch so why is it that we think we are going to find justice and comprehension when we never can see any more than one loop of the Mobius Strip?

There is a reason that ‘understanding’ is among the most priceless of spiritual gifts. How does one come by understanding? One gains understanding through surrender only. Until we can surrender what we think we know, it is all we will know -and that is a mortal darkness, lit with false light, illuminating illusionary forms. We wander blind in disorderly dreams. We act without comprehending. We speak without understanding.

There are no accidents and that is karma too. Consider those who do such terrible harm. Should there be no recompense for this? That is the purpose of reincarnation which is eternally linked to karma. They are magnetized to each other. No one gets away with anything.

I felt so very bad for that dog but I know nothing of the circumstances. I do not know who that dog was or why it was there. I know what I felt and I thank god that I can feel as I do. Look around your world and tell me what you see in this immense and seething cauldron of suffering. What goes up must come down. It is better to stay small and be satisfied with a little than spend a lifetime acquiring useless things that will remain on your departure and ...depart you will. This is one of the most peculiar mysteries to me that people do not recognize that they will lose everything except the progress made within.

Where do your treasures lie? Upon that hangs your destiny and fate; according to that so is your karma. The queen upon the throne may awaken to find herself a sidewalk whore. The billionaire may wake up chained to a galley. It is all important what we do from this moment and in each succeeding one. We should be filled with gratitude at every opportunity to be of service. Our intentions guide the way. There is far less said here than what is implied.

Visible sings: ♫ I Don't Love You Anymore ♫
'I Don't Love You Anymore' is track no. 3 of 10 on Visible's eponymous
'Les Visible' Music Album
Lyrics (pops up)