Operative Wisdom

Beginning and End

First, *ego* is NOT part of what many call "the divine creation" but rather added baggage that is part and parcel to our conditioned thinking. Ego does not "hold us back" but rather the Grand Trickster our conditioned mind "holds us back". It is all the Causes of our Suffering that we must let go of and not merely this or that minor cause that we wish to let go of. Letting go of one or two or some Causes will indeed lessen our Suffering, but letting go of all of them would eliminate our Suffering.

Another's Awakening holds the Pointers for us for our own Awakening. Who better could Point to the Path than those Walking it ? Another's Awakening does not enhance our own Awakening but can enrich it as Pointers for us.

"Next dimension" ? Sounds like a space movie. There is but One Dimension Dear Friend, and that is the one you ARE right NOW. Dogen once said: "Above all don't wish to become a future buddha; your only concern should be, as thought follows thought, to avoid clinging to any of them". "There" is nowhere to *go* for you are always where you ARE, non-localized by "here" or "there". "Here" keeps you trapped in the past and "there" keeps you trapped in the future, unable to enjoy the present Moment. It is all in our head, the Illusion of *this* and *that* and "here" and "there". When we stop *thinking* about it, we simply ARE simply DOing what must be done IN What-IS -- whatever and whenever and wherever that we may BE.

Indeed such a medium as a public discussion group, saying it out load as it were, we are able to hear it as though someone else said it. Definitely a self imposed therapy. As WE are the cause of our delusion, WE are the cause of our Awakening. Has it not been said that "God Helps those who Help themselves" ? No one Saves us but ourself, no one can and no one may, others can Point to the Path, but we ourself must Walk the Way.

It would be surprising if you did not squirm. It would be surprising if you did see the conditionings as conditionings. It would be surprising if you did not *think* you would be worse off without them. The fear of letting go of them will contrive all sorts of false rationalizations so as to convince yourself that these conditionings are Insights of Awakening. It would be surprising if that fear did not. Letting go of those cherished conditionings is a most arduous task fraught with many trip-hazards and walls. If it were an easy task, if our conditionings were indeed Insights, then all would be Awakening and there would be no war or greed or conflict or hatred and Peace and Goodwill would reign Supreme. The world at large would be Sir Thomas Moore's "Utopia". But alas, the world at large is not "Utopia" and there is much conflict and greed and hatred and war so would it not be reasonable to say that your *rationalizations* are a bit unfounded ?

Remove the baffle, for I would say that the simple *smile* on the faces of those Awakening, those who let go of all their conditioned notions, let go of all the Causes, is sort of a *clue* that they no longer Suffer. Or do they just paint that smile on to fool us ?

Physical suffering, physical pain, physical stress and strain and aging comes along with the deal of physical manifestation. It comes and goes, and sometimes hurts in between -- that is the nature of manifest form -- the nature of physical existence is this physical suffering. We just have to make our visit as comfortable as we can minimizing physical suffering as much as we can.

Ah, but the Suffering of which I speak is Sleep. Sleeping, we are prevented from BEing who we ARE because we are controlled and manipulated by our ideas and images and meanings of greed and conflict and selfishness and hatred and regrets and wishes and broken promises and broken dreams. We are controlled and manipulated by our conditioned perception and so can not perceive What-IS Truth and Reality. THAT is Suffering. And the Cause of that Suffering is our conditioned notions. Sleeping, we say that is simply the way of life and not suffering at all. And indeed it is the way of Sleeping life. But it is not the Way of Awakening Life. Where most often is seen the smile emanating from an Inner Source, and where most often is seen the sadness also emanating from some source ? Are those smiles and are those looks of sadness not clues or Pointers to Awakening and Sleeping ?

So why not Sleep, why start Awakening ? The smile. The Peace, the Compassion, the Brotherhood, the Goodwill, the Grace, the Love, the Life without Sorrow and conflict and hatred.

When we let go of the intellect we stop intellectualizing, as when we let go of our conditioned ideas and images and meanings and notions of all sorts we stop the intellect. THEN we can simply BE. We can not start Awakening via the intellect. Awakening is about not having any concepts to intellectualize. *Intellectually* we mistake the practice or the study for the Truth, the route for the Path, whereas the practice or study or route is but a Pointer to the Truth or the Path.

So I would say that letting go of the cherished concepts that we cling to would be a step in giving the intellect nothing to intellectualize. For the brain is simply the brain doing what the brain does being the brain, as the mind is simply the mind doing what the mind does being the mind. Letting go of the conditioned contents of the mind that Veil our Awakening and we remove the fuel for the mind to do what it does best, which is conceptualize and intellectualize. That is, we can not discard the mind (or would want to) but we can Silence it.

Awakening can not be Truly Understood via the intellect or any aspect of mental activity. Awakening is all about *ceasing the intellect as Observing What-IS, AS it IS, without projecting our conditioned notions into/onto it. An intelligent person can indeed grasp Awakening faster than the non-intelligent, though intelligence is not a prerequisite. For the intelligence Helps us in our Awakening but can very well be a block to it. So I offer, understand Awakening with the mind BUT you will not Awaken through the mind. Awakening will not be in the *study* of Awakening, but rather in the BEing Awakening. IN the Silence of mind, we Hear. IN the Void of ideas and images and meanings, we See. IN Awakening from the chatter of the conditioned mind, controlled and manipulated by the images and ideas and meanings contained therein, we ARE.

When we live our lives in a programmed automatonic state of Sleep as it arises, we are living our own contrived Illusions and not actual Life AS it IS. So we are simply living our conditioned notions, as we have for millennia, as the vicious circle of war and conflict and conceptualization and intellectualization and rationalization that we *think* life is. This is not Life but rather our conditioned projected conceptualization of it.

Is it not time we start calling a spade a spade rather than calling it a shovel because a shovel is what we have been conditioned to call it ? That is, we can mouth the words of *this* or *that* and speak of the impermanence and therefore the Illusion of manifested form -- the formlessness of form. But when we still cling to our conditioned notions these words are but echoes in the Valley of the Shadow of Death uttered by none other than the Grand Trickster our conditioned mind. The Grand Master of the Causes of our Suffering. In an Esoteric way, unbeknownst to him perhaps, David Copperfield is telling us something.

This is something Siddhartha told his disciples, "if you see a Buddha kill lit", so as to say that statues were only outward representations that are too often mistaken for the actual. He did not want his offerings to be gathered a bobbles and used as sign posts or ornamentation, but rather Directly Experienced. So yes, he stressed the need for the actual Direct Experience rather than the conceptual. OR, the Real rather than the conditioned.

"There" is nowhere to *go* for you are always where you ARE, non-localized by "here" or "there". "Here" keeps you trapped in the past and "there" keeps you trapped in the future, unable to enjoy the present Moment. It is all in our head, the Illusion of *this* and *that* and "here" and "there". When we stop *thinking* about it, we simply ARE simply DOing what must be done IN What-IS -- whatever and whenever and wherever that me BE. As Ramesh Balsekar has said, "The sage lives in complete apprehension of the fact that there is no individual doing anything, whether it be writing, walking, talking or anything else. Thus, he may be said to walk a thousand miles without setting a foot outside of his house or speak for forty years without saying a word."

The first stumbling block is *your* reality, for Reality can not be possessed as *yours*. *Your* reality is but a contrivance of the Grand Trickster the conditioned mind, so *your* reality can be contrived any way you *desire* it to be. And as long as *your* reality is lived within the confines of your conditioned mind it can be "more peaceful, loving and happy and less fearful" -- in your mind. Yet, when *your* reality tries to co-exist with Reality there is an obvious *tilt* of the pin-ball game we have been playing in your mind. Perhaps not obvious to us, for our conditioned thinking and behavior is our reality and our world (so to speak). When Reality IS, AS it IS, without us projecting our conditioned notions into/onto it, Reality IS "more peaceful, loving and happy and less fearful". For it is our conditioned ideas and images and meanings that make *our* reality not peaceful and not loving and not happy and quite fearful. Reality IS Peace and IS Loving and IS Happy and IS no Fear, so it is a matter of Waking-Up to the Fact that *our* reality is but a contrivance IN our mind establishing no peace and no loving and no happiness and much fear.

Think not, All is connected for All is cut from the same bolt of cloth. Even empirical science has proven this in their studies of particles *sensing* other particles light-years away form each other. That is, the Conscious Awareness of a particle of All other particles IN this Bolt Of Cloth. In their experiments they sent one particle in one direction and another in the opposite direction in space. In their observations of these particles, when one particle deviated from it's trajectory path the other particle's trajectory (light-years away) deviated the same as the other simultaneously. THAT is connectivity. Which shows that All is connected, All exists IN/AS the same bolt of cloth. As an animal senses a friend or foe, humans also sense Loving Kindness for it is our True Nature and so Embrace their Loving Kindness with the sensed Loving Kindness of another to establish a Living Kindness of One.

As we do *Random Acts of Kindness*, as you said, it makes us feel good and that energy is emanated and so is sensed by others who also do *Random Acts of Kindness*. One would be surprised how infectious *Random Acts of Loving Kindness* are. As said, "what goes around comes around".

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To try to change the world is folly, for the world will not change until humanity changes itself individually by Waking-Up. Then indeed, the world will change individual by individual -- and I dare say, no other way.

Bound to it ? Bonded ? Is this not a diplomatic way of saying *attached* ? And are these attachments not conditioned, innocently or self imposed or otherwise ? Yet it is True that we must be IN the world, we must not be OF the world. It is in the control and manipulation of our conditioned thinking and behavior (beliefs) that bind us to these attachments and thereby impede our Awakening to their illusive non-secure nonpermanent nature. A house divided will fall where as a house together will stand. And Saints are not the only ones who can discard this conditioned thinking that I sometimes speak of.

It is not about renouncing the world, it is about renouncing conditioned thinking and behavior. Renounciants are no better off than the Sleeping for they have only substituted one belief system for another. We must be IN the world and interact with it daily, but what we must not do is buy into the conditioned thinking that establishes our *bond* OF (or attachment to) the world. So we do not discard the world, but rather our attachment to it. We do not discard our participation IN the world, but rather our acknowledgement OF it's worth.

I contend that we must do this when/as conditioned notions are removed from our Experience of this very present Moment. For nothing else is Real. It is all about what is Real, and not what we *think* is right or wrong or good or bad or evil or righteous or past or future. It is about NOW. It is about Awakening.

We must *shed* or discard our conditioned thinking and the beliefs that control and manipulate our perception of both the world be interact with continually and our ability to see ourselves for who and what we really are.

Others who are also Awakening will Understand precisely what you are going through and what hurdles you face along with the pain because they have Directly Experienced it themselves -- the old *been there done that*. And they can point to these problems and even make suggestions BUT no one Saves us but ourselves, no one can and no one may -- others can point to the Path, but we ourselves must Walk the Way.

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