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I don’t see what I thought I see

The world is a dream. And in the dream there is no way I can tweak, unless and until I recognizes it as a dream. Again, I may question whether in that moment of recognition, am I dreaming, or observing the dream? Both is possible.

To come to understand the above, lets look at the simile of a dream. There is a two “you” – the dreamer and the dreaming. There is a you who is dreaming and there is another you in the dream. Which is more real or true? The same too can be referred to our aware and unaware state. The unaware state is liken a dream. It is incorrect to say which is more real. Both are so-called real at its own level. The clearer you becomes the moment of unawareness seems unreal to you. Just like the dream. When you come out of it, the dream is unreal to you. It is in contrast the comparison arise.

To address this notion, it is important to know who is this “I”. From my own exploration, understanding and realization until this point of time, the “I” is a bundle of ideas. “The bundle of ideas” are the conditioning of the past. Whenever awareness and the acquired wisdom matures, coupled with observing mind, you will have directly experience to the nature of conditioning and its impersonality. You will “see” the an entire ideas, concepts and motivation around the conditioning. If you follow what I am sharing then it will be easy to see who is the “I” in the dream, except conditioning playing out itself. Just like when you are unaware, you are in the autopilot mode, run by conditioning. Even though if you are aware you will also observe the whole entire conditioning running without your ability to get out of it. Your ability to observe this is also a kind of conditioning – conditioned by wisdom. So in other words, when we are not conditioned by wisdom, we are by default, conditioned by ego. In fact the entire existence is conjured by the ego, lives by the ego, dies by the ego. Sporadically, wisdom comes into being, just as the Holy Spirit comes in as inspiration (in-spirit).

I can assume that the world of reality that is so, so real to me is a dream – a holographic dream. In science there is a light hologram. In the mind there is a hearing hologram, smelling hologram, touching hologram, seeing hologram and tasting hologram – each having its specific function. When they exist together, the hologram becomes tangible, becomes real, at least as what I thought.

Why do I say it is a hologram? Observe your seeing. What do you see? You may see lots of things but in reality you don’t see things, except conceptualization of something which you are seeing. What is that something? Colors. Every color has its own boundary and in that boundary a concept of form is created. Imagine all the colors you see has no boundary. Imagine too that if there is no color at all. Is there a form? This explanation is only one out of the five bodily senses. What about the mind – the greatest conjurer of all?

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I can’t have what I want

This is a hot topic for many who has read about The Secret. It may also be a controversial statement for those who are able to get what they want.

Let me share the principle of The Secret: You can have what you want.
Stephen Mitchell (Byron Katie’s hubby) in respond to a writer who request the difference between The Work and The Secret has this to say: You can want what you have http://www.thework.com/newsletter_april07.html

I will put a fresh perspective to both that statement:

Your want is what you have and what you want you can’t have.

Both statement seems to contradict each other. Before I go further on this I wish to complete the topic statement made by my meditation teacher: You can’t have what you want. What you have is only suffering. It is important first to recognize that the statement and also all the writings I have done so far is not attacking or defending any subject but rather exposing what the mind is all about. And the word mind is Nature – it does not belongs to me or you except as an experience.

For anything to come into result, conditions has to be laid for it to happen. We tend to forget this common sense. We tend to ignore the journey though it is the most obvious experience that finally lead us to the effect. In fact the effect is, most of the time, an anti-climax. That reminded me back of another statement made by one of my teacher, Hari: Your creation is not at all important as your ability to create. Now when I want something, I am already ascertaining myself that I don’t want something that is already existing. At the same time I also don’t want my wanting to fail. For example, if I want a bigger car, I am already saying that the car I am having is not good enough for me. I am also saying, verbally or mentally, that at all cost I am going to have it – implying that I don’t want to experience not getting it. So I can’t want something and yet don’t want another thing at the same time. Both are the opposite sides of the coin. There is no separation in them.

Whenever I want something, cause and conditions has to happen for the result to occur. Recognize that wanting is one, and creating the cause and condition is another. If I want something and yet do not work on the cause and condition can the result happen? The answer is obvious. The cause and condition are the ones that create the result, not the wanting though it seems like the wanting is the initial point for the cause to arise – untrue. If it is true, then all wanting will have a predictable causes. Do you get the same result of the same wanting, all the time?

There is another way of seeing wanting, and that is creation. Wanting is not creation. Wanting has desire whereas creation has creativity. When I create something, I am creating the effect and surrender the causes to Nature. I trust what comes to me next is supporting my creation and thus surrender myself to the causes that is beyond my comprehension. My creation is out of sheer joy instead of the insatiable wanting. Wanting has fear of not getting, creation has joy of manifesting. Both have different intention and motivation. Let me illustrate a simple example: If I want a carpark at a certain location there is a possibility of me not getting it as at the back of my mind I fear of not getting it. Fear is a meaning not wanting it to happen (don’t want). If I create a carpark and leave the rest to Nature, the possibility of me getting it is extremely high.

Let me come back to the new phrase: Your want is what you have and what you want you can’t have. Whenever I am wanting I am already having that wanting in my mind and in that wanting I can’t have what I want. In other words my wanting is only wishful thinking.

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Stop seeking Truth, instead recognize the Ego

I can only tell you the ways you cannot arrive at the Truth, and when you have found all the ways by which you cannot arrive at the Truth, you will find the Truth: then it will be yours, and not another’s which is but an imitation.
– Beyond the Himalayas

There is no necessity to seek the Truth, what is necessary is to seek what blocks you from the Truth. (ed)
– Your Immortal Reality

My wise meditation teacher loves to hear about problems a meditator faced rather than what the meditator wanted to share to impressed him. To him, it is by understanding defilements can wisdom arise. Wisdom is hidden away due to defilements. That brought me succinctly to question why when a master finally arrive at his/her own enlightenment, he shares the Truth with the world.  Why the word “Truth”? Why not something else like Nature, Universe or what not? It came to my realization that the Truth is the opposite of False. There is a high possibility that what they thought they knew before came as a realization that they are all false, lies and fabrications and thus their need to share what is truly understood by them as Truth. Quantum physics call it optical illusion.

When we start to question the purpose of life at some point in time, we tend to incline ourselves to a specific faith or religion, to seek the Truth. Here lies the irony. When we seek the Truth by imitating what we should and should not do, we moved ourselves further away from understanding the nature of existence, from Truth, so to speak. We imitate what great masters have shared instead of learning to understand what they are trying to convey. So instead of moving closer to Truth, we are in fact moving further from Truth.

It is not the cause of the religionist, neither is it the fault of the seeker. What is more true is the nature of ego is to blind. Remember the quote mentioned by Yeshua? I stood in the world and found them all drunk, and I did not find any of them thirsty. They came into the world empty, and they seek to leave the world empty. But meanwhile they are drunk. When they shake off their wine, they will open their eyes.

And there are those, while still seeking, goes spiritual shopping. Chogyam Truangpa labels it as spiritual materialism. You can never win the ego! except to recognize them when it arise. That reminds me of what Yeshua has to said:

A wise fisherman cast his net into the sea. When he drew it up it was full of little fish. Among them, he discovered a large, fine fish. He threw all the little fish back into the sea, and he chose the large fish. Anyone here with two good ears should listen.

If you don’t fully comprehend the verse, let me share with you a parable by the wise Rumi, adapted by Osho, another wise soul:

One day Jalaluddin Rumi took all his students, disciples and devotees  to a field. That was his way to teach them things of the beyond, through the examples of the world. He was not a theoretician, he was a very practical man. The disciples were thinking, “What could be the message, going to that faraway field… and why can’t he say it here?”

But when they reached the field, they understood that they were wrong and he was right. The farmer seemed to be almost an insane man. He was digging a well in the field – and he had already dug eight incomplete wells.

He would go a few feet and then he would find that there was no water. Then he would start digging another well… and the same story was continued. He had destroyed the whole field and he had not yet found water.

The master, Jalaluddin Rumi, told his disciples, “Can you understand something? If this man had been total and had put his whole energy into only one well, he would have reached to the deepest sources of water long ago.

But the way he is going he will destroy the whole field and he will never be able to make a single well. With so much effort he is simply destroying his own land, and getting more and more frustrated, disappointed: what kind of a desert has he purchased? It is not a desert, but one has to go deep to find the sources of water.”

He turned to his disciples and asked them, “Are you going to follow this insane farmer? Sometimes on one path, sometimes on another path, sometimes listening to one, sometimes listening to another… you will collect much knowledge, but all that knowledge is simply junk, because it is not going to give you the enlightenment you were looking for. It is not going to lead you to the waters of eternal life.”