Saturday 27 March 2010

O, Our Lives' Sweetness! That We The Pain Of Death Would Hourly Die Rather Than Die At Once!

The unfolding story of a life might be anything; the claiming of those incidents, feelings, thoughts, and attributes are what constitutes an ego. It is preached over and over again that the ego is undesirable. The ego is. The personality negotiates this bliss and sorrow and madness and sanity that is the world, the universe; or at least, it seems to. The mistake, we are told, is to take the mind's stringing together of what happens in time as the whole of our existence. The error, it is said by many, is to have the unfolding story informed and motivated by fear. No, no, say others, the problem is to pay any attention to the story at all. The story, after all, is comprised of a lot of past memories and future plans that have no more substance than a few electrical impulses in the brain. Live in the here and now, it is strongly suggested. No, no, that's wrong, say some, it isn't about living in the here and now; it's identifying with the here and now, it's the ego willing itself to be here, now that's the problem. The ego doesn't really exist. It is an airy-fairy construct. What you are is what comes before the ego claims and feels and interprets, before the ego decides it needs to be here and now. But what am I, say a chorus of people led by their ego, if not this thing that feels and decides and thinks and lives?

Well, say many, you are what the feeling and deciding and thinking and living arises in. All appearances of life are the same thing, but take many apparent forms. And the pensioner writing vehement letters about the local councillors neglecting to show up to council meetings, the soul very deeply enmeshed in the story, with no clue that the nature of existence is boundless and is comprised of limitless possibility itself, is just as infinite as the yogi abiding in I Am. The form is unimportant. The content is insignificant. The stories are as they must be, and that includes everything, including the impulse to action to change the story into something "better".

There is a huge desire, a massive (often implicit) aspiration of the egos that write about nonduality (or enlightenment or awakening) to show others their true nature, to help egos to stop identifying with the story the ego negotiates and the attributes the ego possesses. Just a few sessions will do it, some promise; others practice tough love and tell the egos to stop clinging to love and compassion, that it's just another trap for the ego to stick around, now considering itself to be pure unconditional love. Whatever is suggested, is suggested, and whatever is attempted is attempted. No matter how "to the point" the content of the story is, it is just another interesting manifestation of energy, which is, after all, what matter also is. No matter how deluded or how sensible the story is, it is all infinite and eternal, boundless and free, no matter how the mind interprets what is happening.

Enjoying it, even the "bad" bits, is always a possibility, for mere existence is wonder.


The clip is from Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful. How he makes use of the worst possible situation to amuse his son is the imagination's proof that anything, any circumstance, can be tolerable.

21 comments:

Rizal Affif said...

So much for debate about The Truth.

Not realizing that Oneness is beyond right and wrong; there could be only perspectives.

Nice post BTW, provocative :D

No One In Particular said...

Hi Rizal, thanks. There is room for all perspectives, including the perspective stating that the inclusiveness of all perspectives is wrong!

Brenda (betaphi) said...

THAT is my all-time favorite movie. My throat locked up when the tank pulled up at the end. Beautiful.

March scoring ended yesterday. The topic was leadership. I read probably a thousand stories about Hitler. Yuk.

Today essence and I are going to a birthday party. Mine! Happy springtime, Suzanne.

No One In Particular said...

Happy birthday Brenda! That Hitler...always there reminding us...

Thea said...

mi

Thea said...

Life is beautiful...thank you for the video and wonderful post...

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there." ~ Rumi

Prem, vania

No One In Particular said...

Hi Vania, great Rumi quote. And you're welcome.

Julian said...

This film is a great inspiration and joy. It's hard to think of this wonderful man as just another infinite manifestation of energy, like his father's horse, or the soldier that shoots him. But the finding it hard to get is that too of course.
Funny the way the man tries to pinch other people's hats. Wearing another hat but the same infinite expression beneath. x

Barry said...

Suzanne, you have the *best* videos with your posts. Thanks for the work you put into finding these.

I appreciate how you point to the possibility of dancing with everything that appears.

German orders can also be Italian games.
Form can be emptiness, and emptiness can be form.
Ego can be liberation and liberation, ego.

Let's dance!

No One In Particular said...

Hi Julian, it is, indeed, a fantastic film.

No One In Particular said...

Hi Barry, OK. Do you know the mash potato?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQBKpV9emKc

I'm doing it RIGHT NOW!!!

Ricky said...

There are many people, just like myself, who would never dream of reading blogs like this and brown nosing one another over who has the most profound communication of all this nondual stuff. We live our lives completely oblivious of names such as Ramana, Nisagardatta, Tony parsons etc. We have no time for contemplation and wondering what all this is. We eat, we sleep, we empty our bodies of waste matter.

Come on all of you. Get a life!

Barry said...

Oh my goodness - this brings back memories. I was in high school when that song came out and we danced it every weekend at school dances.

Of course, we didn't have those awesome go-go dancers!

No One In Particular said...

Hey Ricky, for real.

No One In Particular said...

Hey Barry - I can just imagine it!

Ricky said...

One can have the greatest respect for those who communicate this message until they go public and you become aware of them.

No One In Particular said...

Hey Ricky, in that good ol' story that just seems to keep unfolding, any point of view is allowed, and often reveals the state of mind (and heart) of the one whose point of view it is.

At any rate, in the grand scale of billions, no one reads this! Whew.

Julian said...

n respect of Ricky's comments - if you want to be bumped into a place beyond all thoughts - that which some call awakening - where thought is exhausted,and has no place to go, I suspect this is the place to be. But of course, Suzanne would say, quite correctly, that it is all THIS whether you feel awakened or not; it's all awakened because IT IS.

ian said...

hello its good to see that a particular is known amongst billions.

No One In Particular said...

Hey Julian and Ian, thanks for taking the "time" to comment!

Wellness Education Institute said...

ahhhhhhhhhhhh...

when it comes right down to it, nonduality NEEDS ego-ic-ness... (for perspective's sake, if nothing else).

nonduality, in and of Itself, would be quite boring.

name one of us who doesn't drink (coffee? adult beverages? water??) or eat, or speak, or see, or hear, or feel.

the fact that we blog (or that we have ANY "thing" to say at All shows that [like it or not] we're engaged on the dual/duel gameboard).

if we (Really) believed that nothing mattered, we'd never write or talk about it -- especially not in any kind of convincing way.

after All -- in Nonduality, who is out there to convince?

in a world of relativity (which exists if/when an individual perceives ANY-thing "outside" or somehow "different" from himself), duality is not only a necessity, it's part of the definition.
:)
some label it as "evil," while others use it to live.
:)
interestingly enough, both of those words (spelled backwards) are the Same thing.

love your stuff, no one!
lenny