The One Thing

What is the the one thing you must do in order to lead a life of understanding and enlightenment?  You must always question authority. Because both the authority you give to others and the authority within (the self that thinks it knows) is the beginning of a self created bondage.  Freedom does not exist in the abstract. It is always in the moment of self understanding.  It is seeing into the depths of ones psychological motivations, both the external and internal.  It is getting past our deeply conditioned psychological prejudice. Seeing through the activity of a mind that is caught in discriminatory practices. One must realize that the very thing that we worship is also the thing that destroys us.

The mind needs to experience a continual rebirth so that yesterday's problems, disappointments and fears do not become today's obsession.  There is nothing under the sun or in this cosmos that warrants a mind being held hostage to the past. The past which leads us to give ourselves over to the neurosis of religious or ideological fervor. There are no absolutes only the temporary reality of momentary understanding.  What seemed to have validity a moment ago may have no validity in this moment. The mind must be fluid in its approach to understanding and timeless in its ability to exhibit compassion.

One must realize that life truly is an arbitrary experience of evolutionary happenstance.  We like to find order in existence so that we can create formulas and mathematical models. But the reality is that the cosmos it really quite random and not at all formulaic.  Quite possibly we may never be able to create a "theory of everything" because in point of fact we are that everything...and can this evolutionary being ever be capable of anything greater than its own continued evolution?  So we question because that is the beginning and the end of everything.

The Search for Validity

The path to the truth of the moment is fraught with the pitfalls of a mind that is seeking. We must ask some important questions in our attempts to navigate through the illusion of minds tendency to seek validation in what it already thinks is truth.  Is there a pathway to truth? Does that pathway involve a system of belief or a universal consciousness? Does one seek truth through dispensationalism? Surely the universality of truth does not need validation through the auspicious aberration of dogmatic myth. What is it that creates a fluid validity that cannot be intellectually challenged? Perhaps one requires a catalyst of unknown origin to bring about a state of understanding that is not a "result" of the illusion of "knowing".  It may be that validity exist outside thoughts defined limits. If validity cannot be logically advanced in a given circumstance then perhaps one can never have a truly valid thought. Then the idea of a "valid" concept is non-existent. It then must become simply a transient notion of fact that may or may not be valid at some point in physical time.

Divergent thought is the beginning of a movement away from the intellectualism of logical analysis. That one set of known ideas or facts leads to other facts (convergent) and thus a valid understanding of corporeal existence.  To be divergent is to be original.  The creative genius that is within us all does not seek a means to an end.  It is itself simultaneously the beginning and the end.  Its validity is fluid and is part of the absolute moment of understanding and insight.  Therefore its validity has passed as has the moment of its realization.  One needs the logical in order to function in a society that is predisposed to a life of acquisition.  But in order to understand completely the self that is the one who seeks validity in such a life, one must live a life of the divergent and unknown.  It is the beginning of the original, which is not the result of the previous but something entirely new and without precedent.

Freedom and the Moment

How do you normally live?  That is, what is self? The consciousness that feels anger, pain, suffering and all the other emotions and feelings that hold us captive? Is it possible to stay in the moment totally and so understand the beginning and source of all that we call living? I am referring to the conscious entity that is aware of its self as the actor who is both the observer and the observed.  In order to get to the deeper levels of one's consciousness the mind must be quiet. In the throws of chaotic emotion and disturbance it is possible to realize a center of complete calm. But one must earnestly be able to separate the known from the unknown. Psychologically we are simultaneously a duality that is caught in the reaction of learned and experienced conflict and the denial of it. We are in denial because we want control instead of understanding. Control is the escape. Understanding is the dissipation of the duality that is the one who suffers and the one who controls.  Staying with that feeling that emotion is what leads us to discover the non-dual.  One can only have hate, jealousy, fear, violence, despair, loneliness as the result of the known.  So can you see that to live totally in the moment means that you live in the unknown.  The unknown is absent all your petty emotions and fears.  The unknown allows for complete understanding that provides original insight into one's physical and mental state. One realizes that all problems and issue's are the creation of a divided mind that is seeking what should be instead of understanding the reality of what is.

Staying with the self that is experiencing the moment is the beginning of an intelligence that understands the angst of a mind that lives in the past.  That suffers for the moment that just passed. A moment that is in fact no longer reality.  Reality is only in the absolute moment.  As such each moment brings with it the possibility of a consciousness that is totally free and therefore totally at peace.  One sees that nothing is missing.  That psychologically you are whole and complete.  The mind is free of the illusion of a duality that is both the creator and arbitror of what disturbs. Do you understand this moment totally?

An Afterlife?

The human condition (as interpreted) can create a need for something outside ones daily grind. But the mental condition of the self is always the result of a past that wants to define.  The past is security because it is the known.  So if a person can project the past as the reality of what should be then however deluded that may be it serves the illusion of something everlasting, without change and manifestly perfect.

Since we obviously are not going to find this state of euphoria in the natural world we create the super-natural world.  A world as defined by religious traditions, both familiar, exotic and outrageously ill-logical.  But as human beings we are inclined to be intellectually lazy.  If someone will do our critical thinking for us, then all the better.  After all we would rather be watching football or some reality show on TV.

An "awakend individual" sees the absolute truth of the moment.  There is no distortion that accompanies the confusion and disintegration of doctrines of religion.  Or for that matter the doctrines of corporate or political entities.  As is realized all these entities have one thing in common.  The control of others for the good of the "cult".  It is a fact that we have to live with and interact with these entities as social beings. But as individuals who are aware of the disintegration and confusion that they generate we must remain in the truth of the moment.

One who is seeking to escape the grind and the unrelenting conflict of life may seek refuge in doctrines which teach that a better existence awaits after death.  The mind seeks continuity in life.  The security that we know what will happen in the future.  So religious doctrines attempt to sell one on an afterlife that guarantees continuity.  That you will continue in some form.  But it is the worst kind of despotism for it is the promotion of a fantasy which cannot be proved.  So one gets drawn into a belief which cannot be questioned by its adherents.  It says because it is "gods" will one may not use logic and common sense to question. And this is the great tragedy of giving oneself over to doctrines and dogma, one becomes a pawn in the struggle to give credence to activities that divide and create fear.  Freedom from all these spurious cults is the answer to a sane existence of a life of unconditioned peace.