I am away to Tibet till 4 Sept. Enjoy reading the past entries and be awakened to the Truth!
Will share new understanding after my return  

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1. I Can’t Appreciate the World

Mum is old, confined to the wheelchair, as if waiting for her days to come to a final. Her body frame tells a lot from being a diabetic the toll it has upon her. First, the illness took away her sight exactly nine years ago. By sheer luck, or purely an act of love, I managed to coax her to meet a china physician, whom with a three inch long acupuncture needle, with unwavering certainty and confidence, inserted into her skull, without needing to try twice. After a few sessions, she swore that the physician has, without her knowledge, poked a few thousand needles into her skull, as she explains later that she felt her entire brain was vibrating uneasily, as if electric current was passing through her head.

Obviously without her ability to see, she has made a wrong assumption. A single needle is all what the physician gave with a mild electric current connected at the other end of the needle, yet the experience itself would have magnified the entire nerve-filled gray matter; that I am sure would have been an uneasy experience for anyone. It is of no wondered, her hands are ice-cold whenever she is brought to the clinic, though emotionally she showed a kind of courage which she always portrayed. The healing modality did recover her sight, but her ignorance of her own diet brought a full swing of glaucoma to her sight.

Secondly, gangrene has had one of her legs amputated. As I sit beside her, I am mindful of a soul that is weary from the bodily dis-ease that imprisons her to the little corner of the wheelchair, day in and out. Many a times sitting alone, she has obviously forgotten about her wheelchair bound experience as she talks to herself joyfully as if there are people around communicating with her. There was once she walked out of her wheelchair forgetting she is no longer two legged. She was also being noticed eating an unseen banana deliciously as she expressed how nice the experience was to an unseen force whom the observer herself could not see. She seemed delirious, but who are we to know what is in her space as her mind experience brought her to a very real dimensional experience that we are not able to perceive, as understandably we are still trapped in this physical body. And aren’t those who talk or walk in their sleep goes through similar experience?

What is real then? Has reality much to do with the body, or to be précised, the perception of the body? As where we are, so long as we feel that we exist, we are practically experiencing reality, at that moment, irrelevant whether it is in this dimension or not. It can be in a dream, in a coma, in an unconscious state of insanity, or even in this reality. So long as there is a perception of a body, of me, mine or I; the so-called realness of that moment becomes our experience, and hence make us think it is real.

When I am not grounded or anchored into this moment, in this so-called reality, I am obviously no longer here, but somewhere other than here. That somewhere can be as real as here, as I am still identified with the idea of me, mine or I. What then is the difference between now or there? Can I say that here is more real than there? Or “there” is more real than here? For when I am “there” I no longer identify it as “there” except “here”, all the time and hence my reality.

Again, what is real? If the Buddha’s answer to the passing mendicant is “I am the Awakened One” – without question, we are all still asleep in our deepest slumber, a dream in the making, oblivious to its deception. As Morpheus told Neo, in the Matrix, “do you think you are really breathing, in this program”? And may I add on, “do you think you are eating, walking, sitting, peeing, moving around anywhere, everywhere”? Do you think there is someone or somebody, or for that matter, yourself, in your own hologram, except a deceptive dream? Am I really, really here? Or is this just a figment of an imagination as pointed out by Mad Hatter to Alice in her wonderland.

Hence, is there really death then, except the dissolution of the body? Can the mind die? Or simply does the mind continues on, albeit a dream state?

Oh, Absolum, please do not leave me until I know I am the real Alice...
(adapted from Alice in Wonderland)

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3. Dream and Awake – are both the same?

My little nephew of six abhors bitter gourd. Not that he does not like the taste but rather, he got the idea from his do-or-die-comrade-brother of nine that the gourd is not good at all. Being young and naive, he unquestionably follows what his peer does, with little wisdom in it. But yet, mind you, he is one wise kid I have ever met. At the tender age of six, he is able to ask questions like why his mind does not stop thinking, why his grandpa needs to leave or why I am unable to speak Mandarin though he has improved himself by taking up English as a means to communicate with me!

Seeing him smart for a question of wisdom, I seek my partner’s interpretation of smattering Mandarin, sufficient enough to make my needs clear to him. Otherwise my mum-in-law is on the reserve, complimenting my needs a little clearer. You see, my m-i-l does not understand English that well and I, on the opposite, have difficulty speaking my needs to her in complete Cantonese sentence. My wife comes in between, knowing a little of Mandarin and lots more Cantonese than me, and hence my mum-in-law completes the whole picture!

So when my little nephew nodded his head to mean “I am ready for the question”, I sounded to him to choose only one of the three statements at his very best knowledge. I gave him three:

• Disliking the food without giving another chance to check it out;
• Disliking the food and keen to recognize why he is doing that; and
• Disliking the food and yet forced to partake out of fear of admonishment from an elder peer.

He chose the second statement without hesitation and I questioned him further the reason of his choice. His simple answer was “I just love knowing why”. Now that makes sense as by nature all of us are inquisitive. And yet we seldom use this trait to question our fear or resistance. We take a blanket judgment and come to a hasty conclusion without pondering further, hence nailing down our potential of expanding our field of knowledge which in due time can come into maturity of wisdom, only when we put into practice of what we know.

Without the initial right information, or right knowledge, it is near impossible to come into deepening our realization as wisdom springs from the onset of right idea or right view.

By nature, we are not born to accept fear as ways of growing or learning but yet it is deeply ingrained within us that we have to use guilt or fear to instil discipline and commitment for change to take place. We do it to others and also ourselves. I am truly surprised that even spiritual leaders too advocate guilt as way of healing – that regret is necessary and redemption is compulsory for change to take effect. Obviously they have not given the thought that wisdom has the potential of making change too.

What went wrong along the journey of our spirituality? Have we missed the mark of what the Masters’ have spoken?  Have we reconfirmed what is already in our mind, the ideas that are dysfunctional in the beginning due to our lack of wisdom? Or is it because we are lassitude in applying the nature of the mind – inquisitiveness, which is an integral part of our journey to wisdom? You can only answer for yourself if you wish to see the dharma* coming alive in your day to day living, else the practise is only confined to the little sitting cushion, a fragment of your day living.

*A word to mean Truth

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1. Everything has Lesson for Peace

When I dislike someone,
in my heart
“I don’t like you doing this to me”
is to mean
“I want you to live up to my expectation”

When I am upset with something,
in my heart
“I don’t like what is happening here”
is to mean
“I want things to be up to my expectation”

When I am angry with what you have just said,
in my heart
“You should not be saying this”
is to mean
“ I expect that you should not say that”

Do I not see
that each time I am adverse to anything
I am stupid enough to expect others
to be what I think it should be?
To imagine that the world
has to follow my needs
is indeed a
stupid
expectation.

Am I not
ignorantly stupid then
at any each given moment
when I am
upset
angry
judging
jealous
resent
complain
or
blaming,
as
what I am actually telling myself is –
I am
stupidly
expecting
the world to follow what I want?

Aren’t I, or for that matter, you, insane, one way or another?

To recognize and realize this is wisdom!

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2. Barking at the Wrong Tree
3. What I give is exactly what I get in return, 100% all the time

.

When I refer myself as “I am”, I am referring to an experience of that moment. “I am” is a product of experience; experience defines me – I am hungry, I am sad, I am joyful – bored, uninterested, frustrated, neutral, uncertain, dumb, great, angry, stupid, etc. Each “I am” arising at each moment is a derivative of a new experience. In other words, where there is no experience, the “I am” is non-existence. But is it possible not to have any experience at any given time? No. For so long as there is a mind, experiences are happening all the time, in the mind.

Experience can be something from bodily senses or from mental activities of past or future. Try out this experiment – let yourself be aware at this moment. At any one given moment there is surely an experience, arising from either one of the six senses. Experience is, in definition, what is cognized by the mind.

For instance, if there is awareness of hearing taking place, I am experiencing hearing of some sort. It can be from the sound of the fan rotating, the sound of the vehicle passing by the road, the bird perching on the tree singing, the noisy neighbor talking aloud , the mild murmuring of an unknown sound at the background, the washing machine working, or a child shouting in the neighborhood. Or even a sound that I am totally unfamiliar with – that too is an experience. Each mind contact with any of the senses brings about an experience – observe that in each experience there are in reality a few accompanying experiences –

1)      the feeling deriving from the contact;
2)      the perception of the experience (the meeting of a memory and what we experience now) and;
3)      the meaning and definition arising from it.

A real life scenario to depict this: I stopped my car close to a restaurant waiting for Lai Fun to grab a bun from one of the stalls for my mother-in-law who was on her way back to Penang after a five day stay in our little haven. While observing what was around me, with the car engine on, I noticed a car parked in a very ridiculous position from a distance away which to me, was creating a difficult flow for the ongoing traffic. Three kinds of experiences mentioned above were concurrently occurring in my space – the mind itself – the feeling of annoyance, the perception of a past memory that cars are usually parked properly and the arising of a meaning that he was wrong in doing such – making a punishment statement which obviously made him guilty of a “crime” that he had created.

In reality, all of this was only going on in my mind, not out there. These three mental experiences, put together, make my experience of the moment real by the storyline generated out from it. Do I have a role in this storyline? No – it came up automatically without my ability to control; yes – it is a result of the choices I made in the past, that makes the present story possible – the unconscious meanings I keep generating from each experience that by now had strengthened itself into a “truth” in my field of experience. The mind nature of evident-seeking makes what is unreal into a reality. And If I were to further carry out this story through verbalization and action, by scolding or admonishing the driver, I put forth what is real in me, to the world. I would have manifested a connection of reality, inner and outer, thus strengthening further my righteousness of what I had perceived.

It all started from an arising of an old idea – a righteous one that people should not simply park – it is an idea I already have in my hard disk and this idea did not match with what it sees. When my eyes met that scene – the way the car was parked – the mind searched through its hard disk to match whatever data it had in it and hey presto – a meeting of old idea with present idea – and a feeling was formed.

Now if my previous idea jived with the present experience, I wouldn’t have make a fuss out of it. If I am one who simply parks and I do it out of no consideration for others, what I would meet in my present experience would be common attitude and thus I would not see it as wrong. In that space I would not be perturbed by what I saw. But if my previous idea in my data bank was one of righteousness – that everybody must be conscientious with their parking, I would be having a nightmare dealing with any experiences involving any vehicle mispark which happens so rampant nowadays in our community. I would be a darned angry guy whenever I came out on the road as every inappropriate parking would be wrong in my perception.

Now what I am sharing here is not about the rights or wrongs from the perception of the public but the rights and wrongs from within my mind. If I allow these two opposites to dwell in my mind, I have to be responsible for what comes up in my space. There is no other way out from this. If I do not make peace with myself for whatever ideas I had invested in my mind, I am not making peace with the world.

All experiences afterall, are ideas meeting ideas, stories meeting other stories, dramas unfolding incessantly – the play of opposite idea meeting another or similar idea meeting another – that is all it is, and in that, suffering or freedom ensues.

Now who makes me suffer?

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Will I rather choose peace or, to be right? In a situation where I am faced with a conflict, the first instinctive reaction which I would normally do is to defend myself and the only way to do that is to make another wrong. And to make another wrong is to attack them, not necessary through verbalization or action, but by a simply gesture of silence that will be potent enough to do the job. And I have learned it so well that when others do the same to me, I can practically feel what is going on in their mind; for it takes one to know another, doesn’t it?

So in such situation, how will I be able to arrive at peace? Moving away from the conflict is not a call for peace, as that action itself may bear resentment as its cause. And to stay on with the conflict is to feel what comes up in me – irritation, uncertainty, frustration, hopelessness – all its relatives of unpleasant feelings. Now here lies the dilemma – there is no difference between getting into or out of the situation as both have righteousness in it; and the end result is non-peace with myself.

I can cheat myself by saying that so long as I am not embroiled in the situation, I am at peace – but is there really, really peace, or merely a standby mode of defensiveness? I come to realize that I can’t do peace by merely wanting peace, or do right by merely wanting to be right. Both peace and being right are effects of what is already going on in my mind. Both have different causeways that finally make me experience either peace or being right. The processes that go on in my head, so to speak, directs me towards peace or being right. I can’t really lie to myself as what is in me is already showing telltale signs of either peace or righteousness even though I may think I am peaceful in my head. Listen to the heart and you will know what I mean. To listen to the head is not good enough to know what is going on in me. But when I listen to my heart, it tells a lot about me, or about the truth of what is going on in me.

Hence my teacher was wise to point out that he will choose understanding rather than peace. For when he understands what is truly occurring in the mind – the causes that lead him to being right or being at peace, the end result naturally unfolds itself, which is true peace. To him, the end result is none of his business as there is nothing he can do about it anyway. What he can do is to be with his mind at all times, watching the way it reacts or responds to a situation and there lies his understanding of the causes and effects of every experience. Be at the cause, and not the effect, he reminds me.

In other words, when I am being triggered by a situation, in this case – conflict, I stand in the space of learning – learning what is really occurring in the mind instead of making concluded judgments that kills the possibility of understanding. As such, I am called upon to be with whatever feelings that comes up in me, instead of hurryingly putting out the flames of its unpleasantness, and also to be with the thoughts that generate those feelings. In this way, I am able to see the co-relationship between thoughts and feelings, and how they finally arrive at its effect of peace or righteousness.

My inner inquiry is not one that is active, looking out for the solution, but rather a passive inquiry, far more potent than having the mind figuring out what is going on. By simply being with what is already here for me in my experience, I am opening up a potential space for understanding and wisdom to arise. To be with myself does not mean not handling the conflict. On the contrary, it helps me to resolve the conflict with peace by being true to what is in me first and in it I will see the reasons behind the meaning of conflict, its cause and its end, thus leading me to act skillfully, for my highest good and the good of the world. Hence, do I choose peace over righteousness, or choose understanding over both? It starts from me and it ends in me. There is no conflict out there except of my own.

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A Course in Miracles, Lesson 133

Sometimes in teaching there is benefit, particularly after you have gone through what seems theoretical and far from what the student has already learned, to bring him back to practical concerns. This we will do today. We will not speak of lofty, world-encompassing ideas, but dwell instead on benefits to you.

You do not ask too much of life, but far too little. When you let your mind be drawn to bodily concerns, to things you buy, to eminence as valued by the world, you ask for sorrow, not for happiness. This course does not attempt to take from you the little that you have. It does not try to substitute utopian ideas for satisfactions which the world contains. There are no satisfactions in the world.

Today we list the real criteria by which to test all things you think you want. Unless they meet these sound requirements, they are not worth desiring at all, for they can but replace what offers more. The laws that govern choice you cannot make, no more than you can make alternatives from which to choose. The choosing you can do; indeed, you must. But it is wise to learn the laws you set in motion when you choose, and what alternatives you choose between.

We have already stressed there are but two, however many there appear to be. The range is set, and this we cannot change. It would be most ungenerous to you to let alternatives be limitless, and thus delay your final choice until you had considered all of them in time; and not been brought so clearly to the place where there is but one choice that must be made.

Another kindly and related law is that there is no compromise in what your choice must bring. It cannot give you just a little, for there is no in between. Each choice you make brings everything to you or nothing. Therefore, if you learn the tests by which you can distinguish everything from nothing, you will make the better choice.

First, if you choose a thing that will not last forever, what you chose is valueless. A temporary value is without all value. Time can never take away a value that is real. What fades and dies was never there, and makes no offering to him who chooses it. He is deceived by nothing in a form he thinks he likes.

Next, if you choose to take a thing away from someone else, you will have nothing left. This is because, when you deny his right to everything, you have denied your own. You therefore will not recognize the things you really have, denying they are there. Who seeks to take away has been deceived by the illusion loss can offer gain. Yet loss must offer loss, and nothing more.

Your next consideration is the one on which the others rest. Why is the choice you make of value to you? What attracts your mind to it? What purpose does it serve? Here it is easiest of all to be deceived. For what the ego wants it fails to recognize. It does not even tell the truth as it perceives it, for it needs to keep the halo which it uses to protect its goals from tarnish and from rust, that you may see how “innocent” it is.

Yet is its camouflage a thin veneer, which could deceive but those who are content to be deceived. Its goals are obvious to anyone who cares to look for them. Here is deception doubled, for the one who is deceived will not perceive that he has merely failed to gain. He will believe that he has served the ego’s hidden goals.

Yet though he tries to keep its halo clear within his vision, still must he perceive its tarnished edges and its rusted core. His ineffectual mistakes appear as sins to him, because he looks upon the tarnish as his own; the rust a sign of deep unworthiness within himself. He who would still preserve the ego’s goals and serve them as his own makes no mistakes, according to the dictates of his guide. This guidance teaches it is error to believe that sins are but mistakes, for who would suffer for his sins if this were so?

And so we come to the criterion for choice that is the hardest to believe, because its obviousness is overlaid with many levels of obscurity. If you feel any guilt about your choice, you have allowed the ego’s goals to come between the real alternatives. And thus you do not realize there are but two, and the alternative you think you chose seems fearful, and too dangerous to be the nothingness it actually is.

All things are valuable or valueless, worthy or not of being sought at all, entirely desirable or not worth the slightest effort to obtain. Choosing is easy just because of this. Complexity is nothing but a screen of smoke, which hides the very simple fact that no decision can be difficult. What is the gain to you in learning this? It is far more than merely letting you make choices easily and without pain.

Heaven itself is reached with empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own. We will attempt to reach this state today, with self-deception laid aside, and with an honest willingness to value but the truly valuable and the real. Our two extended practice periods of fifteen minutes each begin with this:

I will not value what is valueless,
and only what has value do I seek,
for only that do I desire to find.

And then receive what waits for everyone who reaches, unencumbered, to the gate of Heaven, which swings open as he comes. Should you begin to let yourself collect some needless burdens, or believe you see some difficult decisions facing you, be quick to answer with this simple thought:

I will not value what is valueless,
for what is valuable belongs to me.

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1. Whose Choice – Me, Who, or What?

I can only give what I own or what I have. I can’t give what does not belong to me. But the meaning “have”, “own” or “belong” exist only at the mind level, but not the body. It will be correct to say that all these connotations have a further meaning of possession in it. Considering that possession is a mind interpretation, then it would be hypothetically correct to say that when we look at all objects in the world or for that matter everything in the world, whether it is as close as to my pocket, or something that is out there, like a house, a car or a company, they are all lifeless as it can be, merely objects for usage, but not to hold on.

Even the body cannot be said is mine except as a tool for use, for me to experience life. But, that does not equate to me not having to take care of what does not belongs to me. In fact, that’s the problem when the meaning of possession comes into play – what is mine I take fervent care of and what is not mine is none of my business. Imagine if possession is totally out of question but instead everything is here for me to experience, then the meaning of respect comes into picture as I am merely a passerby connecting with what is here for me; for soon it can pass my way for another to experience it. Though others may not be able to experience the body that I am having but yet they can too, share the experience of what I use with my body.

Imagine giving a clear definition of a world of objects and a world of minds and what we get is that what is physical is lifeless, and what is non physical, unseen and intangible, is the only interaction the mind has with each other. If this is truly a realization instead of merely intellectual information, then I will be free with what is within my reach. I will realize that money is only a means for me to use, not to hold back. The house is not my own except a shelter for me to be under. My mind will then has no definition of resisting or holding on to any objects as it clearly sees that the meaning of possession or belonging does not make any difference or impact to what is already here for me to experience except dis-ease. Whether the watch is mine or not makes no difference to the watch per se. Only my interpretation of it makes me use the watch recklessly or caringly. My ideas dictate the fate of watch.

For that when I am holding back my giving, I have to reconcile with my ideas – what ideas am I having that disallow me to give freely – only then can I be free. Thus, giving, in absolute truth, is an illusion – as, if there is nothing that belongs to me, how is then giving possible? Would it be correct to say that giving is encouraged simply because there is a holding back in my mind? That the act of giving is to nullify the meaning of possession at the mind level so as to bring us back to freedom?

Hence when I give, I don’t give because I am happy to give or because I have something to give but rather out of a clear understanding that each quality of giving is an indication of how much I have held on to the meaning of possession, an idea that binds me to an illusion. I can’t cheat myself from saying that since nothing belongs to me there is nothing to give, for I can only know when I am being faced with the test of giving. Similarly, when I am being given the opportunity to receive, am I in resistance? What am I holding back that disallows me to receive freely? Both giving and receiving are merely opposite sides of the same coin – showing me how much I held on to ideas that give me the meaning of what is right and wrong. Clinging is the problem, not the world. Ignorance is the cause.

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Never mind the refund. Not even lodging a complaint. In the very first place, I didn’t even ask to be in this amusement park without having an end to it, where I can walk out as freely as I entered. Neither am I aware that getting my way out of this park is another game I need to figure out, besides what this park offers. It is not stated in the rules before I stepped into this darned nightmare.

Welcome to Elm Street or closer to a newer version of disillusionment, Inception, where dreams are carried into multidimensional layers. Isn’t that what life is all about? Obviously we can only know what we know and not know what we do not know and thus to have this latest movie at our local screen is a confirmation that we are so well-versed with this thing called life that we are able to create unimaginable, though not unfamiliar, stories out of it – while we await our turn to find our way home.

But who was I prior to entering this park? Or do I really exist except as a residual memory of disconnectedness? What if I was to find my ticket home, will I, at the very eleventh hour, resist? Though I am pretty tired of the games this park has to offer, yet there are many a times the happiness I get from the little experiences in between makes me feel otherwise.  But then again, after each exhilarating moments, I am left with an unanswered question of what’s next? The darn thing about it is that I keep forgetting. Seems like this is one of the many unseen rules that exists in this park – that makes me replay the game again and again, albeit in a fresh but yet not unfamiliar game, having similar endings of boredom that propels the what’s next idea popping up in my head.

The great thing about this park is that I am given the freedom to create my own game, along with the set of obvious rules I have to subscribe to. Mind you, the rules are further categorized into seen and unseen. The unseen rules are pretty tricky as they manipulate my perceptions and trap me further into the game.

The seen or obvious rules are four by default, where I am not able to manipulate and change – that there is a beginning and an end to each game, with in betweens of intermittent breakdowns and gradual degeneration. And if I were to play the game unfinished between these four, I have to continue a fresh game somewhere, someplace, somehow – within this borderless multidimensional confinement of the park and without having prior memories of what I have created. Well, we humans have cleverly coined the four as birth, death, sickness and aging to define the seen rules. These four rules are unavoidable. Other than these, everything goes.

One of the unseen rules, causal relationship of cause and effect is primarily the underlying condition to the whole theme of the park. It makes change possible. The word eternity though exist in our human language, does not exist in reality. It only defines a long period of unknown time without change in it. Where there is change, eternity is out of question as the game may get unimaginably unpredictable, unfolding or ending abruptly. Change creates the meaning of time and space, distance and length, forms and transitions. The four seen rules are governed by this primary unseen rule of cause and effect.

Due to the nature of these seen and unseen rules, hence there exist the seen and unseen experiences. For example, what can be seen may be pleasant, but yet in the unseen, the unpleasantness is lurking, unknown to the beholder. For that is the nature of occurrences in this game – that they exist in pairs, in duality opposites. The like and dislike seems to be the main reaction to each experience within the game. As the game unfolds itself unpredictably, the reactions unfold itself predictably within the confinement of both like and dislike in forms of desiring and resisting, holding on and pushing away, inclining or declining.

Rarely are there impartial responses to each experience in the game. But one thing I am certain; where there is impartiality experience of object and subject relationship, a shift is felt – the game seems to take on a twist – an ending of sort. For that I have to be aware, to be mindful of the play of the unseen rules, a force that propels me to go further. Once this force is understood, the ending journey of the game begins; the undoing of what I have created in unknown immemorial time. And as the tiny light is found at the end of the tunnel, I am seeing the possibility of ending the game within the game to find my way home safe – the home that is unconditioned, uncausal, uncreated, and eternity…

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While driving back home from a function last evening my eyes caught on to a rear sticker of a car that read “forgive your enemies”. For a brief moment, I pondered on the silliness of that statement. Not that I am judgmental about what others have to say but rather after long being with the mind, knowing a little more about how it functions, I wonder how could it be possible at all to forgive someone that we are still labelling as enemy.

The world’s teaching, sad to say, religion without exception, be it in the past, even now, is consistently about doing. Are these statements too familiar to you – “I am caught in a tangle of trying to do, trying to live right. I don’t know how to not think or worry or control. I don’t know how to let go.”

Did you not start to realize that this voice has never failed in reminding you to keep doing? Yes, you need not even to remember, for you will be reminded again and again as if there is a confidant or confidante (if ever there is such a thing as a male or female inner voice) in each of us that tells us of what to do next – a private and confidential secretary of sort. Not that we are not forgetful – in fact majority of us are, for reasons we can’t comprehend of late as more and more people are complaining about forgetfulness – the thing we can’t forget, though we want it to, is the voice that keeps reminding us “what to do”, “how to do”. Have you not notice? If only this damned voice leave us to our peace and allow us a moment to savour what is in for us, NOW.

Instead of what or how to do next, which is about ignoring the present, we seldom stay in the moment and question what is going on or how and why is this happening. When we don’t pause and ponder on the present, we are only denying the present by covering up what becomes the past, allowing it to fester deeper. Instead of allowing the next step to arise from understanding, we make the next step a denial of what has occurred. To glimpse this eternal truth is the beginning of our integrity.

It doesn’t matter whether it is a thought of worry, anger, frustration, joy or happiness, so long as there is this sanity that allows us to recognize that each and every experience that comes into the our picture is an experience, not something for us to resist, to hold on to. Instead of taking the next step, we explore what is here for us. For each experience points the way to our cause, usually a dysfunctional cause. Experiences are merely effects of what our causes are churning out each moment. Only when we recognize the cause can we naturally change the course of our future. It cannot be otherwise as all changes can only occur through understanding, not through ignorance. Whatever resist, have to persist.

The journey of our inner spirit reminds us to pause and to remember that the voice in the head is merely a voice, an echo of the past or the future – devoid of essence except a resound. But this we forget. We forget to be mindful of the voice and instead fall into its prey. The voice of the ego seems to be more attractive than the voice of the spirit – never failing us at each moment whereas the spirit has to be recalled as if it is seldom there for us. Or is it because we choose not to listen?

We choose not to listen to the voice that says “enemy”. We choose not to listen to the voice that says “forgive”.  When we hear the voice in our head forgive your enemy, we are quick enough to jump in and do the necessary. We give the voice a gospel truth. The voice “enemy” confirms in us that the party is wrong. The voice “forgive” confirms that we are right. But no matter how hard we try to forgive, the voice “enemy” keeps popping up in our head. And we try a little more. We enlist ourselves in counselling, in workshops, in whatever courses we can grip on to release from the tyranny of this enemy. But where is the enemy except in our mind? And where is forgiveness except a voice in our head? So long as the voice keeps going, genuine forgiveness is impossible. So long as the meaning of enemy persists, unforgiveness has to follow. How can it be otherwise?

To forgive is to make another wrong, in our mind. Instead of healing our thoughts towards others, we condemn them to eternity, by forgiving them. Forgiving is not a doing, is not a thought but rather a realization stem from understanding of a situation. When all these conditions are met, genuine forgiveness arises naturally. The meaning “enemy” simply drops off from the mind without me needing to do anything about it. It does itself.

Hence the importance of staying present and to allow the inner spirit to guide me to understand the situation by giving myself the interest to know what is the cause of the voice in the head. Does the voice enemy have much to do with what I am not accepting? Has it much to do with what is against my ideal? Is there any truth to my truth? Does the voice forgiveness have to do with righteousness? That I am right and others are wrong? That I am compelled to pardon others for the wrong they have done instead of genuinely recognizing that what others have done is not something I could pardon except to understand? Who am I to pardon or even to judge, when I can’t even see the same infesting in me, albeit a different degree? That no matter how much pardon or forgiveness for another, those ideas have never left me? Forgiveness is for myself, not for another. I am my own Enemy, and no other. I have never left myself except in my own delusion.

I can’t do forgiveness. Forgiveness does me. When I meet with understanding, forgiveness unfolds. Forgiveness is none of my business, except my work in understanding the mind.

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What begins, needless to say, has to continue, unless being interrupted. What has not been interrupted will continue to develop and transform, or mutate, and have its end result based from the original cause and what comes along with it. It is a determined path, a path that has all its prerequisites of what it has gathered along its way. Whereas where there is an interruption, the process itself is put off tangent from its otherwise fixed path and enters into a new horizon of potentiality, of new experiences all together.

This knowledge is common sense to me, and probably to you, as a reader, too. But strangely, when it comes to the mind, I am oblivious to this process also occurring in it. I seldom question the mind, seldom interrupt it, so to speak. And if I don’t question it, the mind will follow the path that it is used to. It cannot be otherwise. Each questioning or inquiry is an interruption to what the mind is predetermined to do. In other words, if I am experiencing a certain pattern in my life, I am already not questioning my mind. It can be an event, a situation, a relationship, or even the same note of emotion that seems to haunt me again and again in a certain familiar fashion whenever I am triggered. If this emotion is historically repeating, isn’t it common sense for me to realize that an old program is still running in me, irrelevant whether the storylines or dramas that unfold are different?

No, I don’t. I am ignorant to that. I don’t see it as common sense. Hence I don’t inquire within the mind. I keep solving it outside instead of addressing the mind – by fixing the world. I try to fix, and if it doesn’t work, I would gladly escape from each drama and go on with life, to be hit again by another; like a tsunami; albeit with a different storyline. There are times I am cornered with an issue, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and you know what? I give excuses, to buy time, hoping everything will be solved by itself. One of my favourite ways, which is what a guy normally does anyway, is to keep silent – a silent war within, though there seems to be a silent war without. But does it calm the situation? Fat hopes. When it comes again, as another wave of tsunami – shucks, the pain, the hurt, the agony, of those familiar emotions and again it is the routine of blaming whoever victim that is there for me to target. Come to think about it, isn’t it dumb and insane to keep hoping that my life will be hunky-dory at the very near future, with the same old programs running in the mind? Isn’t that what we are all doing – putting in action the same thing again and again and expecting the result to be different? Albert Einstein called this insanity. I call it a nightmare!

And we are fully aware, or should I say expert, on this field of ancient emotions; except that we can’t get rid of them, or rather do not know how to, and thus keep it a secret in our closet – the mind – as if, we are abnormal compared to the world. But as you would have known by now, the mind runs according to what you give to it and thus what you hide is what it runs! Oops! The things that I least want becomes my experience now – horror of horrors! Isn’t there a way out of this rut?

It is always about abandoning issues, needing approval, fear, insecurity, victim mentality or self esteem, so common to each and every one of us, that we become familiar with it. It is a secret but yet, an open secret! The more we hide those stuffs, the more it takes on a new twist. Since we deny it and find more ways of doing that, we keep manipulating this reality to the extent that it no longer shows itself as it is, but in a new mutated way of something beyond our recognition. As they say, same stuff, different packaging. Superiority is just a facade of inferiority. Inferiority is just a facade of insecurity. Insecurity is just a facade of fear. Fear is just a facade of guilt. They are all one. What about then the so-called love, need, friendship and many more found in life? What about anger, jealousy, discontentment, restlessness and even happiness (yes, happiness!) that we keep chasing after? Are you getting a hint by now that they are our demons in disguised – the stuff that we hide which becomes a projection out in the world? What is real within becomes real outside but since we deny what is within, our reality now focuses in the world, forgetting that the real stuff is actually in the mind – the cauldron of experiences.

I frequently asked myself this pertinent question – why am I perceiving something as I have done before? Can I not look at it differently? Could it be that I am so stuck with my views that I am not allowing myself the chance to see things differently or even accurately? What if my ‘accurate perception’ is a denial of my misperception? You get what I mean? Since I have been so intimate with the mind, albeit a sly relationship, is there a possibility that I become intimidated by it? Possible. Am I denying something within me when I make a conclusion of what I am experiencing? Am I running away from the truth of what is going on in me and thus making the world a scapegoat for my escape – so that I need not face what is within me? Surely, if I am looking at things the same way, the mind has already taken a predetermined path that arrived to exactly the point of what I am experiencing now. Isn’t that common sense?

If this is true, why am I still judging and blaming the world for what is occurring to me? Have I missed the mark somewhere? Have I unconsciously settled on a determined path the mind took on to conclude my experience or could I have interrupted it with inquiry so that it may have started taking on a new highway? Am I taking the responsibility of what I am experiencing now, irrelevant whether it is a new story or drama that unfolds, recognizing that they are merely a facade of a task to what I have given the mind?

And to support this journey of inquiry, I have this maxim in hand – if I see something as I have seen it before, I am not seeing it at all. Inner inquiry is an interruption – a healthy interruption that provokes the mind to look at things differently. You see, the nature of the mind is, should I say, pretty dumb, or, merely a perfect follower. It repeats accordingly to what it has been given. It is a good follower of a “manual” given by me, consistently changing according to what ideas I add on it. It will think, see, speak, feel, smell or act the same old way, without having the cheekiness of changing its course, so long as there is no new information given to its database – simply because I am that. More than that, when it comes to a brand new situation – an all new experience altogether where the mind does not know how to act, the mind will work according to its limiting resources in finding a solution, which many a times caused me much embarrassment. Do I have a choice not to? Have you not notice this before?

For the mind, although being a forerunner of all things; is merely a tool – its function is to follow what instructions I give to it. If I perceive myself a victim, I have started the ball rolling for the mind to take on that meaning. From there it becomes an idea, not just an idea mind you, but it churns out to be my reality. It works according to that idea – it cannot be otherwise. What I put in, it works accordingly. There is no me in the mind, except a tool for me to experience what is in the world. What I hide, what I deny, becomes what the mind is working. There is NO hiding place, sad to say, in me. Not even a cave, a universe, or anywhere else to tuck my fear. It is in ME! Goodness gracious!

When I don’t interrupt it, the mind takes a pathway that it has always taken. It does not have a life of its own, so to speak, except to run its old program the master has given to it. Its purpose is to continue what it knows. When I am not mindful or aware what I inject into the mind – the ideas and views that I took on unconsciously – the nightmares and horrors begins, as that is what the mind is exactly receiving from its end and do not hesitate to start working on it. It works 24/7, all the time, churning out experiences according to what I perceive. Do you not see this? Now, instead of me being a master, I have positioned a switch of roles, giving the mind the function of a master instead – like the dog leading its master during a walk – who is the master here?

And without interruption, life is a mediocre, trapped in its suffering of what I gave to it. The mind is not the problem. I am. So, for me to return to my helm, instead of ignorantly playing the game of hide and seek, not with anyone but myself – indeed a dumb game – I have to bring in inquiry, to allow inquiry as chief in recognizing the game I played in the mind. I never questioned myself, you see. Even if I question, I’d give it an answer that is from the same level of the mind – the space of my hidden fear – a horrible mistake I repeatedly make upon myself. Isn’t that what sin is to mean – missing the mark of what I have mistaken. What else can I expect the answer to be when I answer my own question which comes back to me much like a simile of a dog chasing after its own tail, forgetting that it is one with it? How ignorant can it be!

For that I have to inquire, but not answer to my own inquiry. Even if I were to inquire, what questions would I pose to the mind? It makes a difference – a darn great difference from where my questioning is coming from – in short, intelligent questions, and not questions that fix or try to escape from an issue. It is a question of needing to understand what is occurring in me – a journey of education, a journey of understanding, a journey of undoing, instead of creating a way to resolve. See, the mind has mastered the game of impostor which I have taught so well and now it looks like it is against me – forgetting that it was me who once upon a time placed those information, which at that point, seemed harmless; only to have the tiny mad idea become a reality that had taken a monstrous form to haunt me now. My, oh my, what illusion have I created?

For that I have to open my heart deeply to observations, and end to all judgements, including those of myself for judging. For that I will have to allow wisdom to unfold instead of being clever myself. For that I have to be true to myself. I will have to end all blames, acknowledge my arrogance and cockiness and give myself up, so to speak, in order to live again. For that I will have to surrender totally to what is and just be still, ending all doing and just be – being in the space of awareness with common sense again; to remember not to forget to be in the now for each now is the doorway of where my mind is – in other words, to be mindful instead of, mindless. And, so it is!

How can we say that we have lived fully everyday by simply experiencing the same emotions that we are addicted to every day? What we’re actually saying is, “I have to reconfirm who I am” and my personality is, “I have to do this, I have to go here, I have to be that.”

A master is quite a different cat. It is one that sees the day as an opportunity in time to create avenues of reality and emotions that are unborn, of realities that are unborn, that the day becomes a fertilization of infinite tomorrows.

- Ramtha

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Slipping Through My Fist

I have drifted down a ways along the shoreline,
I just watched these ropes give way
where they were tied.
I could have reached out quick when the ropes first
slipped, if I had tried,
but I was wondering where the wind was trying to take me
overnight, if I never did resist, and
what strange breezes make a sailor want to
let it come to this,
with lines untied, slipping through my fist.
It is downhill, all the way to the ocean,
So of course the river wants to flow.
The river’s been here longer,
It’s older and stronger and knows where to go.

David Wilcox

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My intention seals my own outcome, irrespective what the world offers in return. In other words, my end is my beginning. If my intention of giving is for the sake of a return, my outcome will be expected – returns. My intention here is clearly not of giving, but returns, except using giving as a means to arrive at my intention. ‘Giving’ is used as a scapegoat. There is no giving at all in the very first place. It is the wolf camouflaged under a sheep’s skin. Accurately speaking, giving has never been in the picture at all. If each moment determines the next, how can the first moment of intention, which is ‘return’, changes its direction and become otherwise? How can the quarter middle, middle or second quarter middle, or even at the very last moment have ‘giving’ as its pathway? Impossible.

To allow giving to set in, which is an intention itself, the intention of return has to die, has to end. Both cannot coexist at the same time. A pathway can only change where there is an end to its beginning, with another new beginning taking over its course. True change can only be made possible through wisdom, else the course is doomed with its end similar to how it begins. And this applies to everything in the world, for intention, or mind, is the forerunner of all things.

No wisdom, no talk, as the world goes on with its end result predictable to its beginning. The play is between ignorance and wisdom. A wise intention changes the course, otherwise the impostor comes into play – as what the root word ‘ignorance’ means – to ignore what is true – that it is the wolf in the sheep skin.

So the mind has many impostors in it, copying what is genuine into imitations. ‘Return’ made into ‘giving’. ‘Taking’ made into ‘receiving’. All imitations have self-interest invested in it. With the maxim, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, then return will have taking as its end and giving will have receiving as its end.

In other words, giving is in truth, receiving, as both end and beginning are similar. Similarly, with an intention of receiving, giving has its end as a result. Hence, when I truly give something, I am bestowed with the gift of reception – that the other end completes its cycle. If there is an expectation of return, I am in truth playing the game of taking, not giving, for each meaning of return has taking as its beginning.

As such I need not await what is bestowed to me from the world, as I have already bestowed myself the moment I set my intention. What I expect from the world is my own ignorant, a lie I unconsciously put upon myself. Only wisdom allows me to see this. Or else the world is always seen as defending or attacking me – an imagination I concocted from my own delusion.

With return as my intention, I am done. With giving as my intention, I am done too. Both have different end as its result. To say thankyou is redundant after the act, except as an expression of appreciation, and not of gratitude. To have gratitude is to see that there is something out there for me or to me, which is delusion at play. Everything is of me. If receiving is my game, giving is my end – I give myself the gift of allowing things to arise from me – not that someone is giving me. ‘Someone’ or ‘something’ that comes my way is only a manifestation of my intention. In reality and proven by quantum physics there is no one out there “out there” except an imagination of our consciousness. That is the true meaning of the law of attraction. I am entitled to what I intent. I am my own entitlement.

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There…
Here…
Ere…
Re…
E…
…
(poof!)

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