Thursday 30 August 2012

Just Love


Stay true to yourself against all odds and against allopposition.

Love yourself and extend that to the world around you.

Let yourself fall in love with everything.

Learn how to channel who you are through your excitement andnot your anxiety.

Be ever mindful of who you are and what you're doing, andwhy.

Explore how you react to things.

Allow what is to be what it is - it's that way for a reasonthat will serve you if you let it.

Know when to stand your ground, know when to step aside.

Live for and in the moment, for the moment is eternity.

Always go with the flow.

Never fight back.

Just love.

Wednesday 22 August 2012

Negative Emotional Reactions


You can’t experience something that isn’t already a part of you. All emotion comes from belief. If you don’t have a belief about something then you don’t have an emotional reaction to it. By the same token, if you understood that other people’s behaviour is their choice, and until you make it so, has nothing to do with you, then it would be an observation, not a reaction. It’s on this level that you can ascertain that they are behaving in a negative way. If you choose to make it about you, and create an emotional reaction, that means you have a belief that something in what they are saying is, or might be, actually true about you, and you are afraid that it might be. You can’t have an emotional component about something that has nothing to do with you.

Mostly people are working through their own process, their own pain, and are trying to make you a reflection of what they think they need to see. Reacting emotionally will turn you into that twisted reflection of who you’re meant to be. If you can understand people on this level, that what is being said and done is in their domain, and fundamentally has more to do with them than you. Then you can listen to what they’re saying and decide whether or not, in whole or in part, to incorporate it into your own understanding of yourself or whether it really does have nothing to do with you. From there you can examine your own beliefs and fine-tune yourself, if you wish. Remember, all emotion comes from belief.

If you keep feeling bad, and/or reacting the same way, then you simply haven’t caught all the beliefs that need fine-tuning yet. So you need to keep digging, keep exploring yourself, to find all the reasons and core definitions that define why you continue choosing the same reaction.

This is the whole point to these experiences – and it’s not about the world around you changing, because it won’t. It’s about giving yourself opportunities to find out whether you have really changed…or not. The key is not what’s happening on the outside but how you respond differently to it, even if it looks the same. There will always be emotion. But they can all be observations - emotional responses. Nothing has to be fundamentally foreign, painful or something that doesn’t belong. You don’t have to look at it that way. You can welcome them as opportunities to grow and change and be more of who you are. They can be exciting, new, and wonderful.

What you put into it is what you get out of it. If you believe that people, places, things and experiences come into your life to give you something positive, then that’s all you can ever get from it, no matter what their intention is. And if you keep on finding the same people and things cross your path, it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong, it just means you’re alive. Prove it to yourself by experiencing everything as positively as you can. Tip your hat to all those who can’t believe it’s you.

Tuesday 21 August 2012

It Is What It Is: On Relationships

Relationships tend to start with a mixture of attractions originating from mind, body, and/or spirit. 'That' relationship is where you have all three and manage to fan them into a connection and mutual feelings. If you can explore these feelings and discover through open, clear and honest communication, how to continue moving more and more in that direction, then, well, absolutely smashing.

If you discover that there are no ways to move in that direction, then, well, don't. Yes you'll feel bad, but then, it is clear that the purpose of the relationship, at this moment, is to allow you personally to get in touch with the issues that have caused you to feel that way, and why you reacted that way at that time.

Then the relationship is serving its purpose, and serving you, by allowing you to get in touch with why you feel the way you feel, and integrate these concepts within yourself.

Then, who knows: as you interact with the relationship, using it for what it's there for, then it could also change, because once something serves its purpose, it no longer needs to stick around, and so it doesn't. Different kinds of things can then come up that can open doors that weren't even there before, simply because you were willing to let the relationship be what it was, and use it accordingly.

So many times, people find they get nowhere, going around in circles, going mad, letting their fear destroy what's good about their lives, or their 'head catching up with their heart,' because they are not willing to start with allowing the relationship to be what it is. Once they allow it to be what it is, many times it then changes automatically and they actually do wind up with what they originally thought they wanted.

It doesn't always work that way, but it doesn't matter that it doesn't. Because if you use the relationship for what it's for, then YOU will change, and attract to you, no matter who it is, whatever relationship is absolutely right for you at that moment. If you get in touch with this truth, then it won't matter who it is, because the relationship - and the person - will be totally right and appropriate at that moment. People don't belong to one another, we choose each other every day.

This is how these things 'work themselves out.' Everything aligned and everything in allowance automatically balances. Automatically feels correct and appropriate and right.

And of course, never forget that the most important relationship is the one you have with yourself.

Monday 13 August 2012

Is This the Real Life?

"Open your eyes, look up to the skies, and see." - Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' 


Reality. Something we've never quite got our heads around. Some of us think we have it figured out. There are others who can't deal with it and go crazy. Or maybe it's the "insane" ones who have it figured, and the priests and scientists who are mad. What is reality?

One film I can't get enough of is Christopher Nolan's Inception. It tackles this concept with the perfect blend of conceptual vagueness, engaging complexity, and relentless hints of multi-faceted and infinite ambiguity (Johnson 2012) that are the closest to representing the best justice we can do to this topic.

For simplicity's sake, reality is 'existing.' Existing is like a rollercoaster at a theme park. It has twists, turns, thrills, chills, highs and lows, and it's very brightly coloured, and it's fun, for a while. But in the end it is just a ride. There is no inherent meaning, no blood on the wall, nothing outside what we can perceive. As Morpheus famously says in The Matrix (1999), "If real is just what we can see, taste, smell, and touch, then real is just electrical signals as interpreted by the brain." And there is no more accurate way to measure reality, to know that it is real.

This is the best we can do, but this is the real beauty of existing - our perceptions actually shape and create our reality. There really is only one moment, one continuum of creation, expressing itself subjectively in all the ways it possibly can - infinitely. Space, time, and physicality are our perceptions of them.

I remember a train trip my brother and I took. There was a man behind us engaged in a lively conversation with somebody named Roland, who neither my brother nor I could see. My brother murmured, "he's insane, there's nobody there!"

Very much as the caretaker in Yusuf's basement said of his dreaming charges, "who are you to tell them otherwise?" I remarked to my brother, "how do you know that Roland isn't real, and we're the crazy ones for our inability to see him?"

What you see and feel when you look at a painting will be very different from what I see and feel. I could use any number of adjectives to describe reality, but it can only come down to this: Reality is eternal, a gem of infinite beauty and facets, which we all appreciate in our own way according to our choices.

There are therefore only four laws in the entire universe.

1. You exist. As Descartes put it, 'Cogito, ergo sum.' - I think therefore I exist.

2. What you put out is what you get back. Whatever else this reality is, it is definitely causal. Credit to The Matrix's Merovingian for reminding us all. The continuum of creation that is reality is a consequence of the choices that the participant makes.

3. The one is all, and all are one. If you exist, then you are relationally attached to everything else.

4. There are no rules, except for the first three.
The reason you can't will a million dollars into your bank account is that you perceive it is a more preferable choice for you not to do what you need to do to get the money (Robinson 2009). In effect, you signed up for the specific way these rules meshed together on planet earth, and if you want something more than you want what you currently have, then you'd make it so.

Perceiving is believing. Believing is seeing, not the other way around. Let's stop blaming God, the government, the 'system,' our pasts, our weaknesses, etc. for what we have. For what we are. For all we can taste, smell, touch, see, hear, and love.


These are truly the things that matter the most. The faculties of our belief, the tools with which we craft and create and perfect our dreams, right now. Especially the last one - it is the pinnacle of existing, the sublime idea that makes reality reality. It is what Cobb risked everything for (Johnson 2012), what his journey was always about. As much as I hate Saviors, it is what made Neo sacrifice himself. It is, I believe, what makes the world go round. And who are you to tell me otherwise?


References

Descartes, R. (2003). Selections from Principles of Philosophy. [Project Gutenberg E-book version]. Retrieved from <http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1455678>

Johnson, K. J. (Ed.). (2012). Inception and Philosophy: Because it's Never Just a Dream. John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey.

Robinson, K. (2009). The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. Viking Penguin, New York.

Wachowski, A. & Wachowski, L. (Directors & Writers). (1999). The Matrix [DVD Movie]. Warner Brothers.

Zizek, S. (1999). The Matrix, or Two Sides of Perversion. Philosophy Today, 43. <http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/the-matrix-or-two-sides-of-perversion/>

Pictures obtained from:
http://www.moviefanatic.com/gallery/ellen-page-as-ariadne/
http://www.crystalinks.com/Inception.html 
http://youcantgettherefromhere-theresa.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/public-eye-roller-coaster.html
http://tribework.blogspot.com.au/2011/11/intoxicated-in-your-love.html
http://www.maxisciences.com/cosmos/wallpaper

The Search for Enlightenment: Buddha, You're Doing it Wrong.

Siddartha Buddha's birth myth has a lot in common with most other messianic figures, in that it involves a creative avoidance of the necessary involvement of reproduction and any reference to the vagina, as if there were something wrong with it, or with women altogether. What is it that compels the mythmakers to remove the prerequisites and mystify, devalue and idealise women in this way?

What's more, Buddha's mother died a week after his birth, after having her son crawl out from her side. At least they make some kind of attempt to be realistic, although with a hole clean through you, I can't imagine surviving *that* long.

Such a loss in the formative years tends to change one's perspective. I am one of these, as are many of the people I identify with the most. Jasmine is one of them, too. I'm not hesitant to declare my respect and regard for her. There's a depth of wisdom and beauty to such people, I say. An instinctive hunger for the truth that lies beneath the surface. A unique perspective.

So why, then, was Siddartha Buddha a spoiled dandy palace brat until he was 29? He had every pleasure in the world right there for the taking - food, drink, music, comfort, and of course, as many girls as his tongue could cope with. It's kind of understandable really, I suppose - who would say no? Right?

Siddartha seems to have shown no consideration for anything else, instead gorging himself on everything and everyone that his various body parts could handle. Whatever makes you happy, right?

Until you have responsibility. Buddha married and had a son. At this time, as his wife was nursing this baby boy, he decided to grow up just enough to open his eyes a bit. Only a bit, though this has nothing at all to do with the fact that he was Asian.

And it was this eye opening experience - leaving the palace he noticed that there were sick, starving, poor and dying people in the world beyond his own. Probably not realising that they strained themselves so to provide him with his life of comfort, he instead took away from this experience a keen awareness of the inevitability of suffering and (primarily his own) death. Like I said, only opened his eyes a bit. And what, then, did he do with this experience?

He abandoned his baby and his wife. What the hell. Most religious creeds are built on a fundamentally immature reaction to the realisation that death comes for us all. In the words of comedian Dylan Moran - "Religion is just a formalised panic about death; quick, death is coming, put on the gold hat!"

If gold hats are irresponsible, empty and stupid, then what Buddha did is detestable. He then went on to do even worse: trying to find the path to 'Nirvana' - that is, the way to transcend the painful realities of life and death and suffering, to find peace. Double what the hell. This just goes from bad to worse! This only works if you're say, me; I never tried to get anywhere in life by abandoning my family or ditching my responsibilities or the ones I loved.

He then spent the rest of his life teaching others to try and meditate, pray, rationalise and otherwise wank away the pain they themselves created by being alive and therefore responsible for their choices.

Triple what the hell.

It seems to me that everything he did and taught is undermined because they are all attempts made by him to live with the fact that he never manned up and went home.

And as if this were not bad enough, his ideas caught on in a major way. A religious way...for millions and millions of people. But to me, Siddartha Buddha will never be more than a clusterfuck of pseudo-philosophical cowardly cop-outs; excuses for having been a total bastard and abandoning his wife and his son.