Growing In The Rocks

You are growing in the rocks! Sounds like a strange statement . Before, you think...Brian has completely lost his mind this time, allow that thought to sink in and let me expand on that idea a bit.

Over the years I have been amazed at how trees grow out of the rock faces on the cliffs. I became aware of this again recently on a trip to Newfoundland. On one of my beach combing walks the thought came to me ...

....you are growing in the rocks, just like these trees...


How can life live on such bare and raw elements with very little fine particle soil visible? Somehow, their roots squeeze down through fine cracks and find enough moisture and substance to survive and appear healthy.

We know that life grows and thrives in the elements found on earth, but, the life energy itself, and its source, this is the greatest mystery pondered by the sages for thousands of years.  What is it ?  Over 4000 years ago in one of the Vedic Upanishads, this life mystery was referred to as simply 'That" and also found in this ancient text was the the famous statement 'you are that '. You are 'that', that mystery we call life.

Elements are the basic physical substances that cannot be chemically interconverted or broken down into simpler substances and are the primary physical constituents of matter.  The human body is made up of less then 20 of the 92 elements found on earth, and  99%  of the biological body is made from just 5 elements, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. 

So, what is this life presence that lives intermingled and  immanent among these elements in nature? Life does not seem to come from the elements, although elements are made of atoms which are now known to be made from pure energy rather then solid particles. Life  lives immersed, seemingly within the basic elemental particles and molecules. It is not made of matter, molecules or material of any kind, it is not a thing. Spirit is perhaps a more accurate description of 'life'. But, in reality, words cannot express what life actually is. Life is conscious, it is aware. It is a type of universal intelligence, a cosmic mind, a presence, it can be called the web of consciousness, and it seems to be one giant network of cooperating forces controlled by intelligence and love. Love in this universal sense can be seen as an harmonious energetic balance created when seemingly opposite forces (yin and yang) cooperate for the evolvement of the whole, one life. Consciousness is continually evolving, its very nature is a creative energy force, while maintaining oneness it chose to manifest itself into multiplicity with infinite diversity through creation. Its natural cycle is a return to oneness and nothingness out of the diversity of its creative forms. This creative life spirit is at its very essence, the primordial foundation, the all encompassing ground of diversity (GOD). This life energy which is no-thing is in a continuous play and intermingling with form. It manifests into form for a time and returns to non form or no-thingness. This cycle of being, in form and out of form is what we call life and death. In this sense death can be thought of as the unmanifested life which is not residing within form. It is spirit not attached to or within a physical body.  When life leaves the form of the human body, insect  or plant, it returns to non form. The life leaves the material body, which it had immersed itself into for awhile, and what remains becomes a decomposing biomass over a skeleton of heavy dense elements . What is composed as form will decompose back into the base elements once again, in time. Just as the life spirit cycles from form to non form, so also complex molecules composed of elements decompose back to the raw elements and in time will be used by the life force to compose new forms of living biological beings. 


When we observe a  dead body or dead tree, we know the life has gone out of it.

(below is a painting I did in 2004 )


086-2004 -For everything there is a season  16" x 20" acrylic on canvas
 
Life disengaged from being an apple tree, what remains is the raw bare form of a tree,  decomposing back to the base elements. The life has gone out of it. We are life, manifesting as a human being,  just as it does in the trees and the grasses of the field, here for a short season and then gone. There is a season for everything. - Eccl :3




 



You at the pure essence level can be thought of as life itself , appearing in form. A human being or any being, is a type of hybrid of Life/Spirit and form made of elements. This life/material hybrid is what you are. You are immersed in matter and appear as a living being. But, in some sense you have forgotten who you are. 

This living consciousness wants to experience humanness just as lovingly as the humanness seeks to experience the mystery of consciousness. This consciousness (Life) wants to experience itself (life),  it is 'awareness ' itself and it is also aware of what is, in the present, now. Remember life can only be now. It does not seem to be concerned about past, but there is the idea of the akashic records , and  it does not seem to get fixated on the concept of future as the human little mind does. 

When the human is centered and in flow with the inner consciousness, now,  it experiences the fullness or wholeness of life. But, unfortunately the human condition has been plagued with a major dysfunction where the thinking organ, the intellect has taken over as master. This lower mind  thinks that its streaming thoughts and biological body are who it actually is . We have become lost in thought, with a focused attention on doing, getting and building up our outer appearances,  rather then simply just being, and allowing  the enbodiment of the real self to shine through the shallow layer of facade and outer appearances.  The outer self is a manufactured identity, a false sense of self, a personal story of who it thinks it is, with a history, which is unaware of the inner self life. It is often called the ego or personality, but in reality it is more like an actor wearing a persona mask who thinks the character it plays is the true self.  This fictional separate self has set itself up as the dominant sense of self in a house built on sinking sand , and when the house crumbles with age, along with the facade of outer appearances, it too, dissolves with it.  The thinking mind has set it self up as a master rather than its ideal role as servant. When the outer, small mind (ego) eventually learns to submit to and becomes more aware of  the master, the greater universal mind, a whole new identity is revealed to the entire being. This is often referred to as your true self or inner being and it is really who you are.

To become aware of who you really are, is actually mind blowing because the thinking ego-mind cannot comprehend it. The true self could be called the heart-mind and it is more intuitive and love based. In order to become aware of this inner self  or heart-mind there will need to be an inner work or realization, some like to use the word grace for this opening process into awareness. This opening into spirit awareness will evolve into a deeper sense of intuitive knowing your true identity.
 
To allow the greater consciousness to be aware of and experience  humanness and for the human to become aware of the greater consciousness  is perhaps the whole purpose of the human life. 

So, you are life and you are living now, immersed with, and temporarily attached to the physical elements of earth ....You are, in a metaphorical sense... living and growing in the rocks!


Allow consciousness to experience humanness. Allow humanness to experience consciousness.

Its Only A Game

I went to a funeral visitation yesterday for a coworker. Its a sad time, the man was relatively young at 61. As I looked at the photos which gave an account of his life, starting young and moving to the days before death, I was struck by the thought of how short a lifetime is. What is 60 or 90 years?, its gone in what seems like the blinking of an eye. I looked at the urn with his name on it, with his tattered favorite ball hat lovingly placed on top, and I thought ... that's it, this is what it comes down to ...ashes in a glorified can. We all have to hang up our hat for the last time. We are here for a very short time on this earth. My grandmother uses to always say a phrase from an old  hymn at her hearing about someones death...'Life at best is very brief , like the falling of a leaf'....

So, what is it all about, this short time we have on this planet?

Later after the visitation we went to a restaurant. I have come to expect synchronicities  and coincidence occurrences daily. Its all part of living in the mystery.  So, it was no surprise that as we were eating a man walked into my view, who I worked with 25 years ago. He looked the same as I had always known him. He was smiling with that broad grin, looking very pleasant and mannerly like always. I talked to this now 89 year old vibrant man very briefly, but during our conversation he said something which he always repeated when we worked together, especially when things looked complicated. He always said it with a laugh like he knew some great secret. He would end a conversation by looking  you in the eye and say 'Its only a game' or in a group 'its only a game boys' as he walked away. Years ago I laughed with him but I didn't recognize how profound this statement actually is. Could this be the key to his seemingly healthy outlook on life? He looked at life as a big game...I would always add  my own phrase to his  'we just have to play by the rules'. So, its only a game and we need to play by the rules.

If we look at life as a game, we can then see the impermanence in it all. We will know that...this too will pass. We can be less serious all the time. We can enjoy life with a totally different perspective. Living  'Now' becomes more important then our story, with its thoughts of past and future. Life becomes mystery. We have our role, we play a character in the game and yes there is a rule set. Life seems to go in a better flow, if we follow the rule set. We have a choice about what we do, what we consume and who we spend time with. We can live in love or we can survive in fear, its our choice.

This is my takeaway from yesterday. 'Its only a game' we are playing a character in a play, called the game of  life, live well, and play well because eventually the game and the play will be over. Then we will be able to remove the persona mask, bow out,  and walk off stage.

All our possessions, our social status, our career identity, our appearance to others, our special abilities, our belief systems, our nationality, our race, and all our other collective identifications ...none of this is the real you, it is all props, settings, masks and personality traits that the character in the play is identified with. It all appears in a temporary construct, in a type of multi dimensional virtual reality, with a false self, who is just a character in a game. This character is not who you are at your core; that eternal essence of who you are. We may not fully realize all this yet, but the  day will come when death is approaching, that it will all become clear and then we will know.

Death is a final stripping away of all that is temporal and false, all that which is not the true eternal essential self. Is it possible to diminish this false sense of self, as we play the game of life?  Have we become lost in the character and forgotten who we are? Can we observe ourselves by stepping back from the  temporary character in the play with all its drama?  If we 'die before we die' as the saying goes, we can enjoy the character role without total identification with it.  If we see beyond the illusion, we will find that death, no longer has its sting. We will realize that there is no fear of death, if we can see it as a new transformation toward life without the familiar form. This is the final liberation of  the real you, the you hidden behind the character with its persona masks.

This is the return home, back  into the great mystery, united again with the very essence of life.  This essence is the intelligence behind the creative forces of life, it is based on love and cooperation, not fear and competition . We came from this loving intelligent mystery, and its to it  that, we return.


 I believe the painting (photo below) that I did in 2007 called 'Passage in Time' relates well to this post.

#098-2007- Passage in Time - acrylic on panel

We will all hang up our hats for the last time some day. Grandfather left behind traces of his passage in his small fishing stage in Newfoundland . The items in this painting tell the story of his life. The hat was his favorite during the last years of his life. The kettle would have been used on an outing at the cabin . The buoy was from one of his traps . The matches would have been kept in a dry location. The cod jigger is the kind he used all his life. The snare was used to catch rabbits. The axe handle end is painted red so it would not get lost in the woods.

What is truth?

I started asking deep questions about life at a very early age . When I was in my early preteen years I was asking, who am I?, and why am I here? As a late teen, I was asking what is true?

What is truth? This is a question that has been asked by the deepest thinkers throughout history. There has always been a great debate among philosophers and theologians on what is truth.Then, there is this idea of subjective and objective truth ... what the heck is that ?... philosophy jargon. I won't get into all that.  Basically for the average person, it comes down to what we have been conditioned to believe, the supposed truth of science, politics, ideology or religion  and its scriptures (law) and the perception of truth as a result of experience (Life).  My focus in recent years has been, on the truth of personal experience. Perhaps we all have our own window into truth. Maybe truth is not not always absolute and objective, there may be a case for the truth being more personal or subjective. The whole purpose of humanity may be experimental. Are 'we' living 'our' life or is life as 'a greater consciousness' living in these mortal bodies in order to grow and experience life. Maybe real personal truth is found, in real life, in open minded inquiry, looking within and being less judgemental, in loving and being compassionate toward all forms of life. If there is a choice between the letter of Law (literalism) or Love, wouldn't Love be the highest human-divine ideal and truth?

For most of my adult life I followed a path that seemed to demand that I live a life that strived after some divine ideal. I was trying to meet unrealistic goals that I had set for myself in order to meet a certain standard, to satisfy external expectations.

It has been proven over and over again in history that our need for "the safety of certainty in our beliefs" has killed creativity, innovation and the search for truth. The dark ages in Europe was a good example of how an ideology, one warped version of Christianity, based on a certainty of belief was forced on the masses and it restrained all growth in its wake for 1000 years. For over ten centuries all other spiritual and scientific ideas were persecuted, their books burnt and hundreds of thousands of humans were slaughtered and even burned alive for not believing the same way as this orthodox church. We will never search for greater truth as long as we hold absolute certainty in our current perceptions and beliefs. If we do search for truth beyond what we already believe to be true, it will cause a discomfort to such a degree that we may be forced to abandon our former beliefs and assumptions. This is a very painful process and most of us would rather continue to rest in the safety of our certainty (belief system) then search for the mystery of truth which by its very nature is uncertain. However, it is a paradox that its only when we embrace uncertainty that we can then experience truth and freedom.The truth will set us free to explore the mystery of life. As long as we are trapped in our certainties, we are enslaved in our mental concepts of what reality is.

I believe there is a reluctance to accept what others have to say when we feel our view is the only truth. If other views don't fit inside of our data set of belief, then it gets discarded as false or something coming from 'the enemy'. This dualistic thinking of the imagined enemy, in the other, keeps people in their own dark age thinking. To love our neighbor is to hear what our neighbor has to say. When we hear the world, outside of our conceptual box of belief, and listen to their truth, then we may begin to see clearly, the bigger picture. We may realize greater truth when we clean the dirty window of our perception and see others face to face.


Truth is so expansive, isn't it , it cannot be fully grasped at all, we can know " a truth " but not all truth, because it encompasses all of life. The more we seek after truth the more we realize how little we know, we seek but we cannot find. But, when we surrender to the uncertainty of the "truth", because it is so clouded by untruth, we enter into the freedom talked about in the phrase " the truth will set you free. When we surrender to 'not knowing', after all our seeking, searching and grasping, for that which will satisfies our longing, we will find true freedom. When we stop the seeking and accept, not knowing, then we will find life in its fullest. The surrender to "not knowing" fully is perhaps the most liberating experience in life. When the mind is stilled and the seeking is over, we have found true salvation. It frees us up to be still, and silent before the great unknown power behind life, to the greatest mystery of all, that which is called by many names. "Truth" is just one name among many for this mystery.

The real trick to life is not to be in the know, but to be in the mystery- Arjun Walia

The realization of  truth is really more of a process of learning what is not true. Perhaps the greatest untruth is the idea that we are separate from others and 'God'. The word 'God' is a very loaded word.  My view of  'God' is, more like the source of life, the ground of all being, Tao or universal consciousness. This is a more universal accepted view of what God is. Even atheistic scientists can warm up to the view of a universal intelligence or consciousness that is the matrix behind all that is. How can we be separate from this source of life? What is Life?  We don't have a life, we are life. It is our thoughts that create the illusion of separation. When we see beyond this illusory mind set we find  no separation, at all, and  this allows us to experience unity with God and others. When we allow our egoic mind, the separate self, the false construct self, to control us, we in a sense edge the awareness of God out of our lives. This egoic thinking mind is what causes within ourselves a mere perception of separation. When we see the illusion of the false ego self, it will slowly dissolve, because it has been exposed as false. Our true self, once again, comes to the surface and it becomes so obvious, that this deeper essential self, is who we really are at our core. This essential self, is connected to what has many names, universal Self, universal mind, infinite intelligence, divine intelligence or God Self. When we live from the true essential self also called many names.. the soul,the heart, the center, the essence, the core of our being, there is now no sense of separation from our creator, our source and others. We realize we are all one and we share that oneness with all life. Jesus called this state of awareness, the kingdom of heaven, and he did say it was within us.


I will spend the rest of my earthly life peeling back the many layers of untruth that I have been conditioned to believe. It is this deliverance from illusion that sets us free. I am convinced that  we should all question our core beliefs to see if they can stand the test of truth. It may result in  a loss of certainty but it will open up our door of perception, and we will gain a greater understanding of reality.

Loss of illusions

illusion definition: 1. an idea or belief that is not true: 2. something that is not really what it seems to be: 3. an idea or belief that is not true, or something that is not reality

We spend our lifetime learning how to live, but, if we live long enough, we must learn to die gracefully.

Most people don't want to think about aging and dying until they have to. We live in a youth worshiping and death denying culture.

Why do most people fear aging? It is often thought of as a time of deteriorating physical and mental health  and agility, and  a giving up of control and a  loss of freedom.

 Is there a positive side to aging? Aging can be thought of as a process of stripping away all that which is false, all that which is not necessary, to get at what is real. Who are we ..really? Throughout our life we built an unrealistic and unsustainable sense of self. Looking back at our past, if we are already aged,  we were the strong one, the healthy one, the intelligent one. We had the beauty of youth, and the virility of muscle. We had ambition and a drive to succeed.  With aging there is a slow erosion of all that was so important to us, in youth. Many grow distrustful, bitter and cynical as they age. Many people suffer from anxiety and depression as they face up to the fact they are getting old. It can cause a feeling of emptiness or loneliness. Its painful to have to lose the vigor of youth, through the process of aging, we have to give up hundreds of things, and all of our attachments. We have to deal with the lost relationships of  friends and loved ones if they pass before us. The process of aging is a continuous stripping away of everything, until  we get to the final dropping of the the physical body. The trick is  "you must die before you die".

 It all sounds so dismal. But, it need not be a negative process. It comes down to our attitude. If we view aging as a process of dying to the false self and  all that is temporal, in order to find what is the true eternal Self, it becomes a time of spiritual growth. The body gets old but the mind, the spirit and the soul can grow in maturity. What do we lose as we grow old? What is taken away? Our control?  Our freedom?...How much control and freedom did we really have? ...or are we merely losing our long standing programmed Illusions? ..maybe this is a good thing . To become disillusioned means to become free of illusion, it may not be as negative as we may think . It is the gateway to liberation and truth. Its about letting go of the illusions of control, the false and the temporal in life and trusting the flow of life that leads to truth.To simplify, simplify, simplify may be the greatest freedom we could ever experience. Less may be more. Letting go is true freedom. The universe is not against you, it is life sustaining and nurturing.  Aging can be a blessing if you want to grow in awareness of what is real, what is eternal, and what is truth.

With age we lose our illusions and a little bit of skin but we gain a whole new perspective on Life

The clip below dramatizes what I am trying to say:


Life may seem violent at times but it is our greatest teacher.