Inception

"They come here to dream?"

"No.  They come here to be woken up.  The Dream has become their Reality.  Who are you to say otherwise?"

This is perfect

from an ineffable observatory

July 31, 2010
just what happened

The load gets lightened tremendously when the justifications and judgements for the events in the story fall away. We are conditioned to editorialize about everything on our screen, especially our own actions. It's simply just what happened. That is what it has always been and all it will ever be.


(Because he may very well decide to delete it, I'm saving the post this way.)

Considering loss

This post is Joe's fault.

All time is Now.    How can you lose what you still have even if it isn't part of the immediate conciousness of the meat "you" are wearing?

Everything IS.  Therefore, all good things are Us; all bad things are Us.  There is nothing to envy or want.  Just because it isn't part of the consiousness that is the locus that "you" consider your "self" doesn't change that some part of "us" is enjoying/enduring whatever is wanted/feared/loved.

(Recognizing that this is said from a Locus of Comfort and that a Locus of Pain would likely want to smack me.  At the very least.)

Once, I was Quaker

"When William Penn was convinced of the principles of Friends, and became a frequent attendant at their meetings, he did not immediately relinquish his gay apparel; it is even said that he wore a sword, as was then customary among men of rank and fashion . Being one day in company with George Fox, he asked his advice concerning it, saying that he might, perhaps, appear singular among Friends, but his sword had once been the means of saving his life without injuring his antagonist, and moreover, that Christ has said, "he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one." George Fox answered, "I advise thee to wear it as long as thou canst." Not long after this they met again, when William had no sword, and George said to him, "William, where is t hy sword?" "Oh!" said he, I have taken thy advice; I wore it as long as I could."

The link in the title says this is a Quaker fable.  That piece of information doesn't make the story any less useful.

Do whatever it is that is fretting you for "as long as thou canst." and when that becomes intolerable, do something else.

Fearless

This was a great movie until the Hollywood cop out in the last minute.

When he turns back to look at her in the lighted tunnel, turn the damn thing off and don't watch another second.

Damn.  I nearly threw a shoe at the TV.

Disappearing

The day he first told me he was starting to disappear I didn't believe him & so he stopped &  held his hand up to the sun & it was like thin paper in the light & finally I said you seem very calm for a man who is disappearing & he said it was a relief after all those years of trying to keep the pieces of his life in one place. Later on, I went to see him again & as I was leaving, he put a package in my hand. This is the last piece of my life, he said, take good care of it & then he smiled & was gone & the room filled with the sound of the wind & when I opened the package there was nothing there & I thought there must be some mistake or maybe I dropped it & I got down on my hands & knees & looked until the light began to fade & then slowly I felt the pieces of my life fall away gently & suddenly I understood what he meant & I lay there for a long time crying & laughing at the same time.

~Brian Andreas

Yes!!

Over the Hedge

Ramin Bahrani - Plastic Bag

And then what?

“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.”

But, that's the short form and doesn't talk about what it is to live out a Story, ride the meat, with awareness of IS reverberating through the Locus-Formerly-Known-As-Me.

You still ride the merry-go-round. Unless your body is dead and "you" have melted back into the IS, there is a still Story unfolding with You playing the lead. We are all the protagonists in our own stories.

Ramin Bahrani makes movies about people living lives of quiet desperation. And he doesn't ever finish the story of his characters. He just stops telling that one.

His characters aren't world changing heroes. They are people getting by the best way they can. Most characters in the Great Story that is the IS are doing just that.

Would being Aware that they aren't Really Real take way their suffering? Maybe yes, maybe no. How many stories have characters fighting against the idea of being creatures ruled by Fate rather than beings with volition. Thousands? Millions? All of them?

All of Us?

And when "you" let go of the steering wheel...what? Fear? Or relief?

Falling or flying?

I think "suffering", in this context, could just as well be translated "struggling".

The story keeps rolling along, with or without a hand on the steering wheel. It goes where it's going. Like a child sitting in her parent's lap "driving" the car. We may have the illusion of being in control or we may know we are not controlling a damn thing. Our knowing doesn't change the direction of the car.

I find it restful to leave the driving to the IS and just watch the scenery.

Because it is my heart.

I found an article about dancing a labyrinth by Sherry Bulel several months ago. I really like the article. I love the idea of allowing grace to move into and through us.

But I didn't join her online community. It feels unbalanced to me.

Not Unbalanced/whack job. Unbalanced/all yin-no yang.

And that's fine. There are a lot of communities working on helping people to find joy in the world and that's a good thing. There are a lot of gloom-and-doom websites, too. I don't join them, either.

_____________________________

"Why do you do that if it hurts?" "'Cause it feels so good when I stop."

_____________________________

In The Desert
~Stephen Crane

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”

______________________________

I frequently use the metaphor of Reality as an amusement park to myself and when I'm talking to my sweetheart. Sometimes, the Hall of Mirrors is appropriate; usually when I'm talking about Maya/delusion/ego. Sometimes, its the roller coaster; usually when I mean the story/life of the meat.

In this instance, going with the roller coaster is correct.

______________________________

I am not comfortable with all one or all the other. The roller coaster goes up AND down. The raft pops up on the other side when you lean on it.

Only looking at one side feels like sticking my fingers in my ears singing la-la-la-la-la.

______________________________

It amuses me to find this, TODAY, to add to this post.

Wicked good idea ;-)

The first verse is the significant event.

Egg-zackly

I don't even know where I am, right now. But, I know I'm happy to be here.


~ Garrison Starr

Sing! Get up and dance to the music!

I filched this from the ineffable observatory because it is too perfect not to.

Mathematical

I have this image in my head of a Euclidean plane and all those zillions of points that make it up.  When I concentrate on that for a minute, it flows into the quantum physics subatomics that are every where at once.

Also, Flatland.  Not the social crap.  That's dreadfully misogynistic.  The perspective part when the pentagon is lifted up into the third dimension.

And a drop in a pond rippling out to the edges.

Is deja vu slippage around in time?  Ripples through the Is?  Feels like it.

Interpret as you like

John

I thought I had posted this ages ago, but could't find it here, so... here it is.

I'm a chatterbox, lately. I don't know what that's about.

And I'm still on a "language" jag.

So, here are the latest pieces of flotsam.

Families have languages of their own.  In jokes.  Weird definitions that come from a shared history.  Verbal detritus that comes from years of being in the company of each other.  (I can say "That's fantastic" to my mother and she still gives me a look.  She used to laugh herself to tears.)
-----------------------------------------------------
Coworkers get their own language. too.  Some of it is just jargon,  but then there are the weird foibles that happen once or twice and then become habits.  (An example is that, in my group, a quick stand-up section meeting for a dispersal of a relatively small piece of  information to all of us at once is called a "people/people". No one has a clue how that got started.)
---------------------------------------------------------
Then, there is our response to the physical aspects of the people we encounter.  I think we see people through our own history.  We meet someone who is similar in appearance or smell or timbre of voice to someone we have known (or still do) and we attribute some of the feelings for the familiar person to the new one.  We feel more friendly toward someone who is vaguely reminiscent of some one we already like and are more reserved with someone who reminds us of an asshole.   And sometimes those connections are pretty subtle.  (Considered previously http://kittypc.blogspot.com/2006/12/perspective.html)
----------------------------------------------
Another way we see the world differently is through our own peculiar and particular senses.  Because they aren't the same.  Recognizing that some of us need glasses or hearing aids doesn't always help us to realize that our other senses are just as varied.     I have a friend who can tell the finest variations in music.  It's worth it for him to have a thousand dollar stereo system.  He can hear a huge difference from what I get in the earbuds of my MP3 player.  I can't.  But I can tell Coke from Pepsi from Royal Crown from Shasta.... and on and on.  He thinks those are interchangeable.  Men are accused of not being able to tell the variations in color shades that women see, and there are studies that back that up as fact.

Hell, just consider the variants of wine tasting.  And taste in decorating.  There's a reason there are ranges of things going from the sublime to the ridiculous.

And it's all judgement calls.  Made by the individual collections of opinions and sensations of an infinite number of collections of .... synapses?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I recall Michael Valentine Smith's amazement at the pleasure of grass when it was walked on.  Because it was fulfilling its purpose.

My chair has no conscious enjoyment from having my butt in it, that I know of.  But That Which IS. That subtle Bang that Singularly Became the All ....

Conscious?  Aware?  Maybe aware through all our myriad ...synapses.

----------------------------------------------------------

No wonder that with all those variables, each path is different.

------------------------------------------------------

Alternate realities are Here and Now.

New metaphor

I've decided that I like the image of the World/Meatspace as an orgasm of IS/Singularity.

I am living with a subliminal, constant awareness of All/One and that works for me.

Programming

I get tickled watching the programming of the meat as it does its thing.  [more trivial than usual exposition deleted]  The meat is still the meat in spite of not using words like "I" and "Is" and "this is important".  Because the story is still gonna get told.  The lines still get said and the sets still get moved on and off the stage of our awareness.  The bathroom still needs cleaning, pizza straight out of the oven still blisters the roofs of our mouths and double rainbows will still take our breath.

I like the metaphor of Life as an amusement park.