Peace and Fear

Is it possible to move through life, to live each moment in complete peace no matter the circumstance? Can you live life simply, without the need for all the accumulated junk that turns one into a zombie of commercial enterprise. Look around you and realize that all the "stuff" you have is really just accumulated "feel good" emptiness. It has no real meaning, its just a product of the mind that is seeking to find definition outside its self. We have glorified greed to the point that it seems it is all we live for. How is it that we convince ourselves that we "need" to have something, whether it is psychological or material? What is at work in the mind that strives to own, to have? We all know that the ego/self wants to be fed, to have an identity that makes us feel secure. But is there something else at work that is the underlying cause for all this greed? Surely it is fear. The fear of not being in some form. Understanding fear, not in relationship to something, but fear its self as the understanding of all of life's problems. There are not kinds of fear there is only fear. When we think of fear it is normally associated with some memory or a projection of what may happen in the future. We feel compelled to act on our fears, to try and prevent some perceived future undesirable event. A person of intelligence has to do things that maintain the organism, ones health is important. But it is realization in the moment that prompts action not the worry of future problems. The truth of ones condition is in this moment not in the future. Action that is not coupled with fear is the truth and reality of the moment. If fear is our primary motivation then we tend to avoid the moment and become obsessed with the minds projection of the consequences of a our fear. So we essentially do nothing or we escape into some activity that helps us avoid our self created images of fear. If one is always avoiding fear and its perceived consequences then in reality a person is escaping the truth of the moment. In the absolute moment their can be no fear, only action, because one understands the conditioned self and its propensity to want to escape through the illusion of fear. If a person can be free of all the things that limit, that are our fears, then perhaps a new and different understanding of life will emerge. An understanding that frees a person from all the psychological baggage of the past, the past which is the storehouse of fear. If a person wants to understand the true nature of fear, then one has to realize that fear does not exist by its self. Fear can exist only in relationship to something imagined, some perceived threat. So if one can look directly at fear without a defining relationship, then does it exist? A person may then have the realization that all fear is the result of a mind that is attached to self illusion. All fear is self created and does not exist except in ones conditioned consciousness. It is a fact that you can realize only in the moment, when you are not escaping. When not escaping a person may realize vulnerability that is the acceptance of what is, the allowing of the true self, which is without the conditioning of fear and its end product, violence.

To live a life of peace one must realize freedom. Freedom that is the outcome of understanding. A person must see into the depths of ones own psyche and realize the extent to which one is conditioned by ones beliefs. Awareness in the moment that is not the result of a desire to emulate or to become is the impetus for the dissipation of all attachment. Wisdom starts with acceptance. It creates a capacity in the mind that allows an intelligence to flower that transcends the experiential. When a person accepts the truth of the moment then all fear dissipates and it is possible for one to realize peace that is not a result of some ideal.

Seeing Through the Illusion of Self

To "realize" is to find that you are totally alone. That aloneness is the outcome of a person's departure from the things that define, both the psychological and the material. To feel yourself all one (alone) in the midst of the chaos that is the conditioned existence of the known, is to realize an empathy for all who suffer in delusion. Once a person has realized the unconditioned consciousness of an immensity that cannot be defined or named, then one cannot but live a life of peace and love. If one has truly realized then a persons life is not there own. Their is no self that knows, that is seeking or wanting to project. It is the quiet and still presence of an entity that exist not for its own sake or for the emulation of imagined sainthood, but for the anonymous simplicity of just being. To most people this would seem to be the "stuff" of boredom and everything that lacks imagination and creativity. But that is because a person lives only in the conceptuality of mind that is always seeking outside its self. True creativity is the function of a mind that is free of all the repetitious images of what it means to become something or somebody. Such a mind does not copy or emulate. One is free of all the images of illusion, the ideals of success, whether psychological or material. Acceptance of the moment is the only truth, for within the absolute moment lies the essence of all that has ever been or ever will be. In that moment there is no time, no movement, no thought only the realization of an absence that is the immensity of the unknown, the reality of the true self.

Here is the realization, that you cannot know anything. What is known is the conceptual illusion of a self that is seeking its own image in what is. Thought is trying to establish a permanency within the impermanent illusion of life as the movement of time. This is thoughts conundrum, I am this or that, yet at the same time I may not be this or that in the future; so I am forever becoming, even after death in some beliefs. The belief that there is an end to, so I must be reborn. This is the illusion of a self that thinks it knows. It is the base fear, the fear of not being in some form. To realize death without dying physically is the illumination of the absolute moment. It is freedom from the self, the entity that knows. When the self dissipates, then their is only the beauty of the moment. Then their is space for an intelligence that transcends the known.

The mind is normally consumed with the everyday problems of a self that is forever seeking to accomplish and maintain. But all it actually does is repeat its self induced misery. To go beyond the self created ideals of individualism and defined ignorance is to discover the action of selflessness. Selflessness, not as an ideal or a way to achieve some sort of warped piety, but the anonymous allowing of the moment that is manifested as an aura of peace and love. Realize the depth of your own self motivation. Why do you go to church, temple or mosque? Is it to find god or is it actually to satisfy your own selfishness. To "own" god, to be the chosen or to be or know something that separates and makes you "special". Do you dare find out and face the truth of what you actually are? To realize that what you actually do is worship the projected image of self. Can you be kind to a stranger, offer a hand without desiring the psychological effects of a being a "do-gooder". If what you do is about you, then you are forever lost in the illusion of the known. You are the other, they are a reflection of your greed, anger, and violence. Realize the truth of this and you and your perception of others will be changed forever.

The Truth of Relationship

It seems that recently many friends have come to talk to me about their relationships with their significant other and close friends. Mostly they talk of the difficulties in maintaining an interest in each others activities and of what they expect from the relationship. Their is a very important question that has to be considered when entering a relationship. What are you seeking from the other person and to what extent are you willing to give of yourself? People are generally looking for security, something that provides a comforting familiarity and an escape from the basic fears of living. Their is always the issue of love and what it means to love.

The mind tends to create psychological entanglements in relationships that are very hard to interpret. This is so because they involve deep seated inadequacies that are part of ones conditioned consciousness. Whether we want to or not, we all exist in relationship and are to a degree dependent on one another. Indeed, all of life is interdependent. What affects one affects all, whether we realize it or not. So to start one has to realize what it means to be in relationship and that "relationship" is not a choice, it is an inescapable fact. Is it possible for the mind to realize in this moment that relationship involves the whole field of existence and that the idea of an individual relationship is simply the self trying to escape the reality of what is. This statement seems simple but if you look deep inside your own psyche, you may realize the implications of the minds propensity to seek escape. What it escapes from is the truth of the moment. Truth that is a realization of the origin of all fear and doubt. It is an illusion, that you pic and choose your relationships. What a person actually does is look for idealistic relationships that mirror our desires. Relationships that full fill a self created image of what conforms to our idealized fantasies. A person cannot create relationship, it already is. But when one tries to manipulate and control a relationship then one enters a psychological morass of emotional distress. Such a mind dwells in expectation. Expectation that results in aspirational disappointments and disagreements that can only end in the violence of anger, resentment, and fear. Their cannot be expectation and love in the same moment. One defines the self (expectation) and the other is selfless (love).

So how does a person exist in a relationship of love and caring that is not simply a repetition that is seeking security. Many people exist in relationships of convenience, in point of fact most relationships are maintained through an activity of mutual exploitation. It very difficult to maintain a relationship of love because we are always escaping the moment. Because we live in fear we want security not love. Love is insecurity, the vulnerability of the unknown. Only one who is vulnerable can love. Such a being is without an agenda, love that is without definition or causation. Such a person is not looking to change the other or to make a person fit some warped ideal of the perfect man or woman. If you allow the truth of the moment, then you accept the other for who he or she is. When you allow the moment then you realize that love is really beyond conceptual security and insecurity. Now it may be possible for you to realize a relationship of love that is beyond the "conditional acceptance" of a mind that exist in fear.

All relationships are in a sense truth, because if we are aware of the movement of self, then it is possible to see the reality of who we are in those relationships. Others do in fact mirror our own conditioned existence. When you look in that mirror and realize that it is you that you are seeing then perhaps a change will take place, one that is not a repetition of the fear that has always been a part of your life. Then their will be a dissipation of the one that has been embroiled in self motivated expectation. Only the individual can realize the truth, one has to look deep within and find the origin of ones own fear. It is possible for a person to see in a moment of clarity the whole field of relationship and that one must first realize the freedom of the true self (the unconditioned) before one can truly love and accept.

Not Knowing is the Highest Intelligence

I was talking to one of my friends at lunch today. We were discussing, how is it possible to realize something that essentially has no definition, that cannot be named? Most of us are looking for an explanation that will cause us to move further along in our quest for "illumination". But the problem is that when we seek, we must have some "idea" of what it is that we are seeking. So what we seek is actually the content of our own mind. It is the illusion of a self that knows. That idea that we have is a projection of the self, the duality of thought. What is "known" to the mind as "knowledge" is the product of a defined self image. The "known" and the "self" are one in the same. Its conceptual separation is the duality of thoughts illusion of a permanent entity that thinks. So you are your thoughts they are not a separate from you, they are you. Whatever you perceive as a separate observation is the fallacy of a mind that is caught in an ego/centric cause and effect relationship.

How does a person realize that which has no conceptual comparison, that cannot be confirmed by a process of intellective logic. It can be quite humorous to try and talk about that which is unexplainable. One ends up going in a circle of seeming contradiction. But there are changes in ones personality and in the way that a person lives. There is a peaceful quality that cannot be disturbed by the external. A quality of relaxed awareness that is beyond practiced meditation and concentration. It is the outcome of freedom that is not the result of something sought or the product of a manipulation. Freedom from the known (the self that knows) causes a capacity to open up that allows one to see into the very depths of ones own mind and to realize a consciousness that is timeless and immeasurable. A person can never realize the fullness of such a consciousness because it is without beginning or end. Even Buddha realized that he had only touched the outer fringes of its immensity.

It is enough to say that to begin, such a realization must have the quality of unattachment that is the outcome of the negation of the known. Awareness that is absent the self that is seeking. The dissipation of a consciousness that is conditioned by the accumulated. All these words are meaningless if one clings to an ideal, the self created. "It" may happen when the mind is without thought, absent the mechanism that is seeking. There is a quality of non-being that is the desolation of identity that brings about something that is a kind of disconnected intelligence. Something that is without a source or an origin. It is everything and nothing in the same moment. It escapes understanding and cannot become memory. It is totally new and different from moment to moment. It is simplicity that cannot be captured. You cannot know what it is or is not. But if one is aware, an awareness that has realized a consciousness that is not connected to the self, then ones life is transformed. This "transformation" is not a result, or a defined being that exhibits an ideal of what it is to be "illuminated". Any perceived commonality or recognition is the product of the illusion of a mind that is seeking explanation and reconciliation. Such a person abides in the simplicity of just existing as an awareness that has no purpose or agenda. It is a voidness or emptiness that allows for the spontaneous intelligence of the moment, an intelligence that has no connection to what has been or what will be. It is wholly the truth of the moment that is absent the self as the movement of the known.

The Illusion of Effects

When you negate a consciousness that is engaged in the illusion of belief and conclusion then you cause a disturbance in ones fabric of "knowing". It is like a domino effect that translates into a release of the whole sphere of ones repetitive ideological attachment. Attachment that is the minds need to be associated with a particular belief. The mind is in engaged in association as a source of identity. It is the continuity of an image that a person maintains as the process of self knowing. If you negate all association with all images of the self, what is left? If a person is the undefined, the nameless, then what is the source of that which knows? Do you see in the moment that there is a new quality to ones consciousness? It is the dissipation of self, the outcome of which is a consciousness that is not connected to any image of illusion or defined being. It is the freedom of non-being that is without conceptual seeking. Such a mind is completely free of the past, of all the events of all the yesterdays and all the projected tomorrows. Such a person is free of all prejudice and is without the need to compare or control. This is a person who loves unconditionally and does so, not as a matter of choice, but because that is the nature of a consciousness that is unconditioned.

Some people have asked how is it possible to not believe in anything? The answer is simple but understanding it though a consciousness that is a product of the known is difficult. Such a person cannot imagine or realize what it is to be totally free because the mind is caught in the desire for effects. The mind seeks an experience that is "other worldly" or metaphysical, but what it actually experiences is simply the illusion of its own content. It is projected self image with its accompanying physical and psychological manifestations of a self created ideal. Once a person has freed themselves of all belief and realized a consciousness that is unconditioned, then manifestations which are the outcome of that freedom are not "known" to the one who is free. Only those that live in illusion see effects and define them as metaphysical or supernatural. In reality they have no meaning nor do they define one as a Buddha or enlightened being.

When I use the word Buddha, I am not talking about a personality or a personage of time/space. We are referring to a state of conscious existence which is beyond the accumulated and historical context of being and becoming. Buddha is a state of non being. Descriptively but not actually it is a state of transparency that is the space between two word/thoughts. It is a signature that is without a presence, an emptiness in the fabric of conceptual illusion. The illusion of being and becoming that is the deceptive matrix of time/space. A person is always looking for definition and meaning in events that affect us directly and to a lesser degree indirectly. Something happens and we think...what does that mean? We a looking for some kind of affirmation, a sign that tells us we are on the right track or that we are exceptional. We crave a "gift" that is otherworldly and separates us from the others. But in reality it is still the mind that is caught in the illusion of projected image. Image that is the creation of the mind that seeks. What it seeks is always the illusion of its own content. A person can only realize the illusion of the self created, one cannot "know" that which is beyond the self. A liberated mind does not seek anything, nor does it desire anything that the mind conceptualizes as illumination or enlightenment. One can only stay in the absolute moment, for therein lies the true self. That which is without the duality of definition or identity.

A Peaceful Existence

Has man ever realized true peace? People think that they "know" what peace is, but if they truly realized the actual nature of what it means to be peaceful...wouldn't they? Everybody says they want peace, people practice a method, but nobody seems to be able to realize the truth of it. It could be that the true nature of peace cannot be realized through a practice. A practice implies a method, which is the result of organization. Man, it seems has always sought peace through war and violence. So the ideal of peace, the word peace is not the reality. Though the idiocy of the conceptual, the defined, we "fight" for peace. So the peace that we seek is really just an extension of war, the war that is within each of us, the projected image of the violence and contradiction of the self. If the mind is clogged up with a self promoting agenda, how can there ever be peace. If we are constantly trying to undermine the other with our religious or political beliefs how will we ever be at peace. It seems the best that we can hope for is the periodic lapses of violence that are the result of our sheer exhaustion from trying to beat each other into submission. This has been the only peace that we have known, the time spent preparing for another conflict. If your argument is that there can be no peace without the threat of war or violence, then you are lost to me. We do not speak the same language. Your understanding is superficial and bound to a particular belief system. It cannot be penetrated by logic or truth. It is reasoning that is the result of emotional and psychological attachment. In such a world there is only violence, to such a mind there is only the illusion of peace, never the reality.

The politicians are a comical bunch, they try to find peace though commonality. They try to find something in opposing agenda's that they can agree on. A common "enemy" or an idealistic goal that may give a sense of a unity of action. How utterly and completely useless are their programs of compromise which are in reality a way to self promote. It is the tyranny of legalized gangsterism. The corruption of authority and its laws of selective violence. One cannot realize peace though the political machine, for it is the very definition of violence. To legislate is to imprison.

Is there an answer to the question of peace? Can the mind find the reality of peace in this moment. Something that is not the result of the book you just read or the teachings of a religion or guru/master or some other such nonsense. These are only the opinions of others which you may make your own, but which are not a realization of ones own violence. A person has to get intimate with ones own violence. You must see the violence that is in your own perception of peace. To realize the origin of ones dualistic nature which is the beginning of all violence. All violence, indeed all wars come from the smallest thought, the perception of the divided and alienated. They grow into an immense ideological hatred that is the result of conformity to the perception of a common fear. Is it possible to look directly at your own fear and realize how closely related it is to the violence that you inflict on yourself and others? When we speak of violence we are not just referring to the physical or psychological, but to the whole field of violence that is the consciousness of a conditioned mind. The subtle violence of opinion and conclusion which begin with a mind that is in the conflict, confusion and contradiction of the ideal, the illusion of a self that "knows".

So a peaceful existence has to start within. In the depths of ones own psyche, a person has to realize the extent of ones own violence. How that violence has been ingrained in the mind since birth. A person must also realize that one has a genetic propensity toward violence as a means for survival, and that the intellect can carry that instinct beyond what is reasonable for the prevention of extinction. If a person realizes the moment as the reality of what is, then it is possible for one to live a life of peace that is the outcome of an unconditioned consciousness. It is a mind that is constantly letting go of the past, not clinging to the minds disappointments and disagreements. It is allowing the truth of the moment to cleanse you of all opinion and conclusion. It is recognizing your own violence in the violence of others and realizing the intelligence of peace that is beyond the self that thinks it "knows".

You, Me and Truth

It is interesting how people dance around the truth of the moment. They are in fear of realizing the illusion of a self that is motivated by the violence of power and greed. To face the truth of ones self is difficult because it is the beginning of the end of the separated. The divided lives in the fear of not having of not being able to acquire and control. The ego/self must maintain its individuality in order to project its image of confusion, contradiction, and conflict. People live in a world of conditioned disharmony and defined ignorance. The self is immersed in a sea of conceptual belief. Belief and conclusion that is the prejudice of a mind that is sick with the desire for conformity. Conformity to the authority of self image and organizational tyranny. To break free of this authority is to realize the true self, the unconditioned and uncorrupted consciousness of that which is free of all attachment.

An illuminated consciousness is without self "knowing". Illumination which is just a word that has no meaning, is without a defining individuality of self. One cannot become illuminated, a person can only dwell in the light of the truth of the absolute moment. Truth that is without an entity that knows. It is beyond the scheming and acquisitive mind. Thought cannot conceive of its immensity.

Many will think it a fantasy of the mind, an escape. But if a person is actually free of all of the things that the mind has created as an escape from the truth of the moment, then it is possible to intuitively realize something that is beyond the self. This is the beginning, to realize a small glimpse of an existence of total freedom. The idea of freedom is not freedom, but if one can see in the moment the reality of conflict that is the outcome of attachment, then perhaps a person will be experiencing a small release. That release will open the door to freedom that is not a function of self motivation. It is in reality a negation of the self that is attached. The dissipation of a self centered consciousness.

There are enough "spiritualist", "soothsayers", "shamans" and "new age" guru's in the world to make a person cynical about anything that seems outside our "normal" activity of greed, conflict and fear. But in reality they are part of our self motivated, acquisitive, and power seeking conditioned existence. There is nothing new about anything that they tout. All there prepackaged foolishness is just a symptom our own desire for self promotion and conformity. It has been going on since man first realized that he could con people into believing in the so called supernatural, and create a power base with wealth and all the other trappings.

You cannot "seek and find" outside yourself. That is what this blog has been about. It is about you and me and how we find out the truth together. Truth that is without the mumbo jumbo of some "secret doctrine" or the teachings of some "enlightened" wizard. All these people are out to make a buck off your insecurity and fear. The only thing you need to do is to free yourself of all your self created illusions. All the rest of it will fall into place naturally. In the Diamond Sutra, Buddha taught the essence of simplicity. But one will not realize it until the mind has been set free. Freedom is the only real truth, it is the outcome of unconditioned love.