The Meaninglessness of Fame

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There is an unnatural desire in man (the species) to want to be famous, to stand out, to receive accolades, be important, to be raised up above others. Having said this, I am not writing from what is known as ‘the tall poppy syndrome’, a type of sickness that wants to see others cut down if they are successful.  Achieving things is fine, going past our known potential and doing what may have been considered impossible, creating wondrous music, to excel at what we do, this is something that I consider as natural, to unfold something extraordinary in the human kaleidoscope is noble.
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The Big People Know Everything
When we are children we start to ‘look up’ to people, we are little, they are big, they have more experience in the world and looking out our tiny window we see that they can do and know many incredible things.  Depending on the experiences that happen to us and whether we are powered or dis-empowered by those who educate us, we gradually slot into a place in the community. In some cases in the past adults had an attitude of ‘children should be seen and not heard’.  This attitude has spawned generations of suppressed humans who feel like they are wearing a suit of armor two sizes too small with minimal joint movement. In some cases, in those moments when they escape the suit they often lose the plot and we see a trail of casualties of drug and alcohol abuse and other destructive behaviors.  And of course there are others who manage to surf the gigantic waves and ride safely to the shoreline and live out beautiful lives.
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The Leveler 
I discovered by accident years ago that all men and women are equal. Yes we hear that every day, there are documents in place, people spout it from pulpits in churches, the writers of political speeches throw it in every now for touchy feely effect to have you believe their brand loves everyone.  We have to come back to basics here and rip the idea of ‘all are equal’ apart.  Here’s how it works. I may be a barista, the worlds best, dreadlocks, hipster clothes, mice music oozing out from the vinyl on the stereo system, a smarty-pants walk, everybody loves me.  When I am making the worlds best coffee that has been carried by donkeys from deep in the jungles of Amazon,  I am doing my dharma (my natural calling and life purpose done with utmost integrity and virtue), at that moment I am invisible; when I am invisible God/ the totality of Being/ the Sublime Super Consciousness is flowing through my veins like water at the Iguazu Falls.  When it’s time to go home and I don my alpaca sweater, pick up my 1940’s typewriter and climb onto my solar powered bicycle, no longer am I the worlds best barista, I am just doing what I am doing, biking it down the road, giving the finger to motorists, smiling at the lay…deeees.
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Being able to TURN OFF who we believe ourselves to be is probably the second greatest secret there is.  There is an invisible hierarchy in all communities, and in many cases it’s not so invisible, it’s overt, in your face segregation into pockets of people who ‘know their place’.  I m reminded of a story from India.
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“There once was a man, well educated, had lived in the West for many years and went back to Bharat (India) to visit his family.  He ad a slight arrogance about him that often is seen on the faces of those who see academia as the pinnacle of civilisation.  He got to the river , climbed into the ferryman’s small rowboat. After about five minutes as the boat paddled across the waterway, in ‘exhibition of intelligence’ he opened out a newspaper. (NOTE: Prabhu is a term of respect.) The ferryman said “Prabhu, what is this?” The man gave a little exaggerated chuckle and said “What, you don’t know what that is, you poor fellow, it’s the New York Times, you have wasted a half of your life,missed so much, you don’t know much about life”.  The ferryman said “No, Prabhu I don’t what New York Times is, what does it say?”  The visitor said, “Hear take it, read it.” The ferryman said, “Prabhu, please could you read it to me?.” The visitor said, “what! you can’t read, you have wasted three quarters of your life”. Just then a storm came up, the visitor looked terrified.  The ferryman said, “Prabhu, what is troubling you?” The visitor said, “It is looking very stormy”, he started to shake as the boat rocked up and down.  The boatman looked at him and said, “Prabhu, can you swim?” The visitor shook his head implying that he couldn’t swim. Just then a massive wave hit the boat and as it was turning upside down, the ferryman said, “Prabhu, you have wasted your whole life”… We all value different things, we humans develop a sense of self-importance relating to our achievements.  The tragedy is if we don’t treat them respectfully they divide us, they allow us to feel greater or lesser than others.
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Cosmic Glue
The moon shines out in the night-sky, the planets, shooting stars and a few spacecraft from outside the Earth show themselves briefly and disappear; the night has a resonance about it, a ringing, a deep hum beneath it and occasionally it is broken by the noise of man.  The light of the moon is shared by the rich and poor, lovers, the lonely, the dreamers and the animals peeping out of their holes in the ground.  The Earth in it’s magnificent beauty holds us, its trees that add to its wondrous garment give shade to Sages, dacoits, the homeless and the athletes who need to rest their tired legs. We are bound together, our ancestors held hands with those of strangers we see in the street, the water running through our bodies was once part of something somewhere off in the skies… we are a part of the totality of all of nature and in our hearts our spirits are bound.
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Thought 
It is thought that divides us, everything else is bound together in nature. Molecules collide, they dance and although we can’t hear it they sing. The song of the bird although feint adds a sweetness to the day.  The discriminating mind has its benefits, it allows us to know that 7 pieces of pizza although desirable, will create a problem; walking backwards down the street will not be the immediate logical choice when we think it through.
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We know this ‘thought-thing’ we have can take us to heaven or hell, if we brood over something it can turn into anxiety or stress, if let something go without a fuss, things go smoother.  The ‘thought-thing’ that people usually (and erroneously) call the mind is the source of our discrimination.  We pull stories out of our memory banks that travel with us through our lives.  We have placed people where we think they belong.  There is a tendency to look up to people who have achieved great things, and in the community there is often a feeling of ‘better than’ the less fortunate, the illiterate, the homeless, those who behave in manners that are anti-social.  The poor look at the wealthy and often feel lack, doctors and lawyers are also held in high regard by the uneducated, their feeling of self-worth  can be challenged.  It’s this looking up and looking down that is at the heart of all our problems.
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Bringing a Sense of Order
If I come back to the idea of the dread-locked barista with his hipster clothes, when he goes home the Espresso machine gets turned off and it rests patiently awaiting to appease the needs of the taste buds of early-risers wanting their ‘hit’, the barista is just another hipster in torn jeans, doing his thing, breathing the air or puffing on his e-cigarette.  And after a long shift the doctor lays down his tools after achieving what centuries ago would have seemed a miracle and in some ways I guess it is; he once again becomes himself, a living breathing being with normal emotions, needs, desires, joys and he suffers the same hurts as any of the other brokenhearted, fears of death and other traumatic losses.
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By coming back to basics and seeing that in navigating the human experience we need each other; if a man is suffering, regardless whether he is rich or poor, whatever his cultural background, a healthy being reaches out with empathy, compassion, kindness. At the water-well we all need to quench our thirst equally, a smile is contagious like a yawn, and when we lay our bodies down at night to rest in the dream state, there is no-one higher or lower as we wander the star-fields.
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Tilopa 2.0

The Self … not Selfie

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The word Selfie has become deeply ingrained in our vocabulary, take a picture of ‘me at the Acropolis’, at the pub falling over, me with my new lover, standing next to someone famous, looking depressed, every scenario that we could possibly imagine.
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We live in strange times, a time when humanity is trying to climb out of its cocoon and take off like a butterfly; meanwhile at the same time we have a global community of people wanting to define themselves forever in frozen moments in ridiculous poses. Generations immersed in self obsession beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
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Growing Up
Liking oneself is valuable.  The inverted ego is painful, people grovelling around thinking they are worthless, not good enough, it’s part of the guilt-mind-control program of the religious tyrants, persecute everyone’s thoughts and then offer salvation. Humans are made of stardust, gods in the making, have the ability to love, to wander the stars endlessly weaving through the corridors of the heavens.  So what does it matter if someone hurts your feelings and you get offended?  Really, we need to grow up? Unless a person can divert the arrows of hatred and selfishness of others, dissolve it into nothingness, dis-empower it, there’s little hope for incarnations to come, that is if the great Gods give them another chance…. seriously now (tongue in cheek).
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As long as there is self hatred it is difficult to cross over.  Cross over what? The river that stands between humanity and forever-ness.  On the human side of the river lies a civilisation in conflict, hatred; enchantment with bling, chasing shiny things and before one knows it life is over, the spirit being is ripped out of the body and as the great Sages say, death is like a rose bush being pulled through ones being…then back out into deep space to do a life review and then pop back into another body somewhere for more or less of the same.  The great Buddha man Gautama said something like, “get off the wheel”. Humanity is imprisoned and loves it, it’s like shoes that are too tight, people keep wearing them because they look good but it’s a painful experience….and anyhow they look great in a Selfie.
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The Self and Selflessness
For eons, not just on this planet but right throughout the Cosmos, man and other beings have sought the meaning of life, to understand the Source of Creation, the goal, to put to rest the questions that haunt him/her/it.  From that quest there have been many philosophies created, some have imprisoned species and other tenets have helped them to dig deep, in many cases they have just put their minds at rest and have allowed them to go about their business and do ‘other stuff’.  With their philosophical questions answered, they can be at ease and not worry any longer. Ahhhh the tragedy of delusion, civilisations imprisoned by thought, not just here but throughout the galaxies.
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Bharat, people usually know it as the greater Indian subcontinent, historically has had many glorious beings wander its sands, earth and skies.  In the age of darkness there are many charlatans, the self obsessed pretending to be wise men. But leaving them aside, there have wondrous beings who stepped in and out of bodies there and delivered wisdom appropriate to the times they moved in and also dropped seed thoughts to grow in future generations.  These great beings arrived to remind man of his hidden nature. In some traditions it is known as the Self, or in today’s language I will coin the phrase ‘the Non-Selfie’.
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The Imaginary Me
Modern man (and also that of any time period or sector of space) has difficulty in comprehending selflessness.  He/her/it often considers that it means annihilation, death of who it believes itself to be.  On that note I will give limited-thought-man a little slack and say yes it’s true it is the death of who he/she/it believes itself to be. There is a major difference between who one thinks one is and who one really is.  Who a person believes oneself to be has come about by receiving information and building up a picture and eventually the person says “that’s me”, it is reinforced by the world around and when someone disagrees or says something negative, a person holds tighter, screams and shouts to protect its imaginary self.
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The Beauty of Nothingness
The sage Jiddu Krishnamurthi once said, “you must become nothing”.  A lot of people have disregarded or would bypass this snippet of wisdom.  It is running in the opposite direction to everyone else, everybody is building themselves up to BE something.  It is also easily misconstrued by students of spirituality who have half-knowledge, once hearing this, the sledgehammer method has been known kick in and there is often an attempt to destroy oneself and become blank, eradicate the personality, there is an attempt to run from life, t0 transcend. Human life is a glorious thing, the rising sun, the echoes of the valleys, the touch of a tender being who loves us, the rain on the tin roof, singing out loud on a sunny day, being IN experience is an important thing, life is precious. Experiencing is important, the idea of running is counterproductive, the problem is CLINGING to experience.
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What humanity suffers from is what I will call ‘loop syndrome’. As many would know, an audio loop is a sample of music that just keeps going around and around.  Humans have an experience and want to repeat it.  And mind you this is what happens with drug addiction, do it once, like it, give me more, like it a lot, give me a bigger packet and so on. This happens with MOST experiences.  In an harmonious life, a being has an experience, extracts the juice, the joy and wisdom and moves on.  With humans, what happens ‘under the bonnet’ is the thought particles get stuck and the awareness part of oneself keeps running back to have another hit of the same, like a faulty vinyl record or a CD glitch.
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SELF
The nature of the Self is closely related to selflessness, it is a beautiful contradiction.  Self is closer to SPACE than object and this is why so many people are what would be referred to as ‘going the wrong way’, there is often no consideration that what a person places in the SPACE is the obstacle.  On the other hand selfishness temporarily asserts itself as a powerful being, it separates itself out and places its own agendas above all others, at the expense of others.  Desire and need is normal, it rises for a moment, does its stuff and falls back into the abyss of space; this is the nature of the world of form and thought, there is a constant refreshing.  The NOT SELF, is a series of thoughts that join together and say “hey that’s me”, “I’m old, I’m clever, I’m beautiful, I’m fat”… the bundle of stories the NOT SELF gathers together throughout its lifetime creates the identity that it believes itself to be.  It defends itself at all costs
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FREEDOM
Freedom comes about by gently dismantling and discarding the story of who we are. The continuous self obsession of ‘Selfie mentality’ covers the canvas of life with layer upon layer of information that reinforce the sense of I. And this doesn’t mean that I think ‘freezing moments in time’ in photographs are a bad thing, but understanding self obsession and how it stands in the way of super-consciousness is critical. Personally I don’t really see what people call EGO, I just see it as thought taking up space; a process of meditation is very helpful in learning to detach from thought and abandoning the known.
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There is a way through all this chaos on the world stage and it is in understanding Nothingness, the great Emptiness.  EVERYTHING on the screen of life regardless of what world or galactic civilisation one is in, emerges out of Emptiness/Nothingness and then recedes when its life-cycle is over, this may be a brief moment or billions of years. This Nothingness is ALIVE, it holds all potentials and is at the core of our being and this is where freedom lies.

Tilopa 2.0

The Emergence of Beings from Inner and Outer Space

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There would not be a conscious being who hasn’t looked up at the stars, gazed into the vast heavens and said, “hey, anyone out there?” The dreamers kept staring up with vivid imagination creating stories to suit, the more curious decided to ask lots of questions, some got tired and gave up the quest, others bought telescopes, some acquired statues of Buddhas and dropped deep into the Silence with their puzzles and many researched to see if there was information being withheld by those in power, and others set out to debunk anything that didn’t fit into their logical worldview. And then there were those who hid in their version of God and preferred ignorance, it seemed like a safe place and no work was required because ‘God would take care of it’.  And then there were others with brilliant minds who wrote math formulas in an attempt to put what seems immeasurable into a workable possibility. All are players in the great cosmic dance as Earthman has attempted to crawl out of the deep slumber as he moves through various aspects of himself that seem to range from ape-man to a type of angel/uninhibited light-being, even a god and every possibility in between.
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The Cosmic Crossroads
We are at a milestone in this civilsation where we have a wealth of information available on the topic of aliens and unidentified flying objects. Much of it is often questionable and I say that not because it is all false but because it differs so much from one source to another and it is difficult to measure something outside our known, reshuffling the thought molecules that are glued together is a complex task, there is safety in the known. Our sense of curiosity is vaster than the many deceased cats who overdid it. And then there has been the misinformation campaign that is outside the scope of this article, however it is not any great revelation to hear that those with a private agenda have dominated and controlled the information on the world stage, they shaped the narrative on the subject of UFO’s that is commonly believed by the community. Also there are a lot of trippers who have no idea and come up with fascinating scenarios based on a little info, one of the issues is human beings often see the world in still frames and in order to get it to make sense, they create stories, in a way it’s an innocent accidental untruth so people can put their mind at rest with not only logical stories but illogical ones as well. AND to make it even more complex, the diversity of species is such that those who are genuine contactees and experiencers of Space Beings and ET’s receive information that is aligned with a specific alien group, in the same way that religions differ from sect to sect, when we are dealing with beings from the past, many from the future, from inner earth,  inner and outer space, from numerous dimensions and to add in something that at times to most intelligent people seems incomprehensible ‘multiple-timelines’, the information is going to differ on many things. It WON’T make sense, as I see it, the resolve is in self-transformation.
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We Agree Something is Doing Something
Without even bothering to enter the argument of ‘are there extremely intelligent aliens visiting planet Earth’  I will just jump straight to ‘which ones are we talking about?’  The question has been answered about their existence many times, a visit to a number of archaeological sites ought to be enough to resolve that in ones thinking, once a person considers the structures are a little too complex for our ancestors who beat their chests on a moonlit night and rubbed sticks together to have created them, it implies previous advanced civilisations surpassed the current human’s level of technology or there was alien or some type of Super Being involvement. We don’t have to research very far, we know that many of the structures relate to the stars and the planets, it wouldn’t take too much to join the dots.  I will throw in the following statement fully knowing it would instantly undermine my credibility and place me into the category of someone who is postulating but has no evidence, quite frankly after decades of exploring the phenomena I don’t actually mind what people think of me regarding this subject, “it is no longer reasonable to FULLY trust our supposed historical sites, keeping in mind that the alien beings are not necessarily bound by our solar clock, they move along the timeline at will,  this means:  Having the potential to plant or move things back in time to give a false view in the future,” basically there has been the manipulation of our history to suit.  Suddenly it gets weirder and if we look carefully at how ‘time’ works, we will see that when we jump off the earth outside the solar system, the rules change,  in fact everything we know breaks; scientists make temporary assumptions and often in time they ultimately fall away as new theories are tested and results are analysed.
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All the information, some real and other twisted fabrications about Area 51 (ummm what about the other 50?) and ‘the Grays’ in the field of unidentified flying objects isn’t even 0.0000001% of the picture.  Does that stuff exist?  Absolutely.  Should we be fearful?  No, it does not need to a focus but being alert and informed is in some way important. It’s a little like going to the zoo and knowing not to jump into the lions cage, the lion has teeth, looks interesting but lets not stick our head in its mouth and find ourselves on the menu or test out whether we have the same fate as the Biblical character Daniel in the Lion’s Den.  I consider conspiracies as something for others to resolve but often it is worth looking at what is out there because some of the so called conspiracies turned out to be true.
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Fear creates ‘clouds’ around our being and it prevents the brain from sending messages through the neural pathways to create the world around us.  A reminder that we are co-creators in the play of life and not puppets of some unseen hand.  We all project onto the ‘screen’ of the world, some do it better, most just re-project the known; may good people rise up and see their potential and add their story to the reality-dream.  Mother Earth is a living Being who follows her destiny but we have multiple possibilities and futures within her framework.
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The False Sense of Social Hierachy
In the West academics have dumbed down the experiences of other cultures into a category of myth and legend and applied the lens of limited ignorance to anything that does not fit into a worldview that places the current ‘Western man with above average intelligence’ as being at the pinnacle of human evolution.  Man the supposed crown of creation, a very advanced being who since (supposedly) crawling out from under a rock, stood upright and eventually used his know-how to build bombs to annihilate whatever he pleases or offends him. This arrogance is endemic among supposedly educated people.  They are bound to a form of test tube and classical physics and often do not recognise or are unaware of developments in quantum physics and though it is difficult for many contemporary physicists to agree on anything, we can conclude that the world is not what we believe it to be, it is not as solid as we thought it was and we can no longer trust what we see and hear, the rules have changed or should I say are no longer as we thought or have been told in the past.
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There is such a broad spectrum in the community of people who claim to have had encounters, many are credible and that does not necessarily mean that they are people who hold a high place in the society but is more about the fact they are sane, have integrity and are very clear that their encounters are real and won’t budge on it for anyone even if their life depended on it.  However, so many people want to BE the EXPERTS, to hold the power, to be in the know, to have the secret, and this is where they put limitations on themselves. There are many in the community who assume that the military or government are the ones who are in control of it, by that I don’t mean own all the craft, I mean that they will have the final say on disclosure, that they are the ones who will communicate on behalf of humanity with the various alien species currently surrounding, inside and walking on the planet.  When we dig around, it is clear that the military as well as senior government officials from across the world have had contact, there’s been ‘walk in and out’ meetings at critical times in our history; some visitors have been benevolent, some malevolent and others that don’t quite fit into either category. And now the general public is beginning to hear of the Deep State programs, these although important to some, have minimal interest to me personally, as the UFO community plays cops and robbers, good guys bad guys, conspiracies, crimes against humanity, treachery, treason.  I am not saying they are not of value or it is unreasonable to be informed but I will state emphatically they DO NOT HOLD the POWER.  A type of Soft Disclosure could creep in via the exposure of the hidden technologies, that is if the patents held by the various military agencies are lifted on what has been hidden from the general populace, without even thinking too hard or being one of those people who claim to be ‘in the know’, the logic is, if certain information is shared, a tsunami of questions will arise and in response to them there would be an unrolling of information, it would be impossible to stop numerous people coming forward and pointing fingers in all directions in order to cover their own backs. A lot of government heads will roll and although it is clear to many that what’s going on is so deeply embedded behind and within the governments, the community will ask for accountability of SOMEONE, anyone. Considering that much of the hardship we have experienced for 70 years could have been avoided if certain agreements had been made and others had been avoided, once the stardust and confusion settles the general populace will be looking for someone to blame. It is beyond my comprehension that very few have really discussed the SHOOTING down of various craft, and continue to call it ‘crashed UFO’s.
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As if Man Knows Everything
We as a community need to find a sensible bridge between what we know and believe to be valid experiences and what is way outside of our comprehension, if known science is the only yardstick for measuring and other possibilities are bypassed, it is not only the height of arrogance but stupidity at its best, man is a dot in the universe.  The dilemma we have in the UFO and alien field is how to embrace what is outside the known but at the same time keep all the unicorn-riders busy and out of the mix, a bit like supplying a ladder for a monkey or a mouse wheel for Mickey and Mini Mouse to ride around on.  And I am not saying ‘dreamers’ have no place, it’s more about allowing a sensible space for those who have had genuine lucid and ongoing experiences of the extra-normal to be able to build a solid base of information about what has been going on in their lives regarding contact with beings from space without having a whole bunch of other people who are ‘interpreting and creating a fantasy story about what they think is true’ getting in the way of something that is critical in understanding the big picture of the UFO/alien phenomena; if not it looks like everyone is on acid or ‘shrooms. It is extremely common for people to have an experience and create a story because there is a natural need for thoughts to come to rest, this may be useful to them but is counter-productive in the big picture.  Although the purple-unicorn-riders may be kind, sensitive and thought provoking, they open the door for those who ridicule to discredit genuine experiencers. Currently there is a street war or more specifically cyber war going on in the UFO field about who are the experts and who is credible, allegations about various people colluding with the darker side of Government agencies and numerous counter claims, meanwhile the general public looks on with commentary as if it is post American Idol or Dancing with the Stars review time.  We are faced with a similar situation where one person says “I experienced God” and another one who hasn’t had the same experience says, “no, that’s your imaginary friend”.  Unless EVERYONE is prepared to be completely wrong and throw ALL their opinions out the door, there is little hope of a resolve unless a fleet of spacecraft arrive on the front lawn of the Pentagon or Parliament and is filmed by mainstream news team.  And this is a problem within itself as the mainstream news does not have humanity’s interest at heart.  The media pours out its poison day after day shaping the fears of man and emphasising the hopelessness of human existence. But hey, the arrival of fleets of craft is going to scare the daylights out of a lot of people, there is no question that is going to happen, it is a matter of WHEN. Although a large percentage of people believe there is life on other planets, having ones daily routines interrupted and changing the story  of their known world is going to throw them into great confusion and will create mental breakdowns, shock and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to say, insanity.  Even when someone’s train or bus is late or the wrong meal turns up at a restaurant the natural tendency of many people is meltdown.  For people like myself who have had a lifetime of UFO and Space People experience, it is so normal that unless Jabba the Hutt was to sit on me quite frankly I wouldn’t be phased.
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So What can we Do?
Simple, get INFORMED.  Read everything, research what has gone in the past, what’s happening now.  Yes there is misinformation and fantasy out there and much of it is contradictory but there is a wealth of information on this subject.

DISCRIMINATE. Personally I think intuition is the best tool we have, and if we want to sort it, we need to work out the difference between what is real intuition, fantasy or is a mental block.

Bottom line: Something is doing something,  rub the dust the sandman left in the eyes, the truth is out there, in fact IT’s AMONG US and it’s time to wake up.

I am not ashamed or scared to speak openly on this

Tilopa 2.0

Redefining & Claiming Back UFO Disclosure

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We live in a time where people are used to instant results, fast foods, the overnight stardom of singers doing what resembles ‘selfies in motion’ on television, societies with lot of tall houses and weak foundations.  As we now stand on the steps at the doorway of the new civilisation where mankind is becoming intergalactic, there is a feeling of anxiety and in some cases helplessness within many people because what is happening on the stage of life is bigger than what they are able to manage or make sense of and a state of confusion and unknowing fills them.
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Not So Ancient Aliens
For those of us who have explored the UFO/alien phenomena for decades we have learnt to wait, to hold steady, not hand over and not give up or feel overly disappointed when what we desire doesn’t materialise.  It is sixty years since the messages from The Heralds of the New Age publications and others whetted the lips of curious spiritual seekers and ufologists with wisdom and information from Benevolent Beings from space, they said they were coming soon and would fill the skies with wonder, our ancestors would be reunited, we watched and waited, had moments when we reached out and touched them, only to see them slip away for periods of time as we went about our daily routines. Some of us went on and off the spacecraft with cloaked memories emerging at a future time.  Many younger people who perceive themselves as Starseeds have entered the sphere of Aliens and UFO’s within the last so many years and are demanding disclosure, “When do we want it?” NOW! “I feel it’s true, the governments must reveal it”. I am not writing this with an attitude of ‘wait your turn young fellas’ but more as a reminder that a certain amount of patience and forbearance is required in this very complex arena of beings from other worlds and the play of power on the world stage. Time is a variable and a moment in space can be a lifetime on earth.  When we go ‘beyond’ the body, what seems like a moment, ions may pass as we wander in what I call the gap between the worlds.  This alien/UFO phenomena is not just about you or me, it is about humanity, its future, a complex past involvement of celestial and inter and extra terrestrial beings and numerous other civilisations whose futures are intrinsically connected by events here at a subatomic level.  It is a situation of the many before the one.  From my window, I see our job is always to work on the one, to raise the one into super-consciousness to impact on the many, to place our beauteous colored thread in the tapestry that floats through space. Just because a person has seen a craft does not mean that the whole agenda of space phenomena needs to bow in honor of that moment of wonder, humility and stepping out of a self-obsessed mentality seems reasonable here.
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The Vilification of Contactees
For years the world of UFO phenomena has been high-jacked by a war on the ground between those who are fully aware that something is out there, they tried to research, explain, seek credible evidence and work as scientifically as possible. As the whole world knows, in the early stages many cases got dumbed down to a it’s just weather-balloon, little-green-men mentality, car lights over the hill, too much alcohol. Experiencers were obstructed, men in black covering trails of evidence, it got turned into very ‘spooky stuff’, don’t dare go there; however it gave humanity a great hint that all is not as it seems in the world of mice and men.  Over time as more has come out into the open and the phenomena has been impossible to hide, the agenda has been about ‘who owns them.  Hollywood propaganda joining in the chorus that monsters from space will be trying to eat you, will invade and one last soldier (always American) will be standing on a hill with his group of renegades in some way victorious with the world around them smouldering as they wander off slowly and slightly broken into the sunset.  Thank heavens for Star Wars, Star Trek and Yoda with his snippets of wisdom who added if not integrity but another narrative to the mix. Then as more people had experiences outside the ‘silver disk in the sky’ UFO worldview, who traveled out of the body and had encounters with what seemed nonsensical at times,  it made it easier for those who wanted to hide what was going on in the skies to add to the mix a lot of fictitious material that made genuine experiencers of unusual un-measurable phenomena look like happy purple-unicorn-riders,  they became the laughing stock of not only the skeptics, the scientifically minded but also those in the UFO community who lean towards hard evidence, radar, videos and pictures. This culminating in a flood of fake vids and pics to undermine anything close to the truth; and this is not a criticism of the scientifically minded and genuine researchers, thank heavens that Quantum Physics has been allowed to flower, it has loosened the grip a little on limited thought.
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War Behind the Scenes
For decades, the information on Aliens and UFO’s has been used to scare people, to create fear and confusion, to control, to dis-empower and vilify good men and women, to make them look like nutters and not only that, from my worldview which is totally outside the square, I will say the information has been throwing imaginary pictures into the ‘thought field’ of human beings to help project and sustain the untruth, to make something more powerful than it is, a paper tiger masquerading as a monster. This imagery and misinformation sits in the subconscious of the individual and disables the creative potential, in the same way that we get up in the morning and say “oh it’s a terrible day”, the ability for us to derail our life and find ourselves bashing against the universe becomes real because we are blinded by our negative emotions and our ‘creations’ are confused and contaminated by someone else’s truths .  The news media both mainstream and the numerous misinformation sites were intentionally created to expose hidden agendas with alien untruths masquerading as secret information, meanwhile unsuspecting people share the stories and in their naivety, ignorance and innocence they help spread an atmosphere of fear. It was just another phase in hiding the greater truth of what mankind really is, where the human species is going and what the real purpose of humanity and all life is. This wave of misinformation has empowered the negative agenda.  And I am not denying there have been heinous crimes committed in the name and game of misinformation, they are noted and fully acknowledged.
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To Disclose or Not Disclose – That is the Question
Disclosure is a variable, it is a word that is thrown around in the UFO community that to many people means tell me the real story.  This is a fair thing for anyone to ask, we have a right to know, it’s an inbuilt program in humanity to want to know. But as the great thinker and sage Jiddu Krishnamurthi said, “Can we ever ask the right question?” Disclosure has a deeper meaning and regardless what information is spread or revealed on the world stage, whether it comes from the disintegrating self combusting destructive ‘hidden government’ who considers mankind as something there for their purpose and play, those who see their hideous agenda as ‘must be implemented at all costs’; or whether it comes from those good men in the military, secret service factions and government who wish to act in a noble way and claim the world back from those who have committed treason; or from the Vatican who have committed endless crimes against humanity for 1700+ years by raping, torturing and stealing of millions of children, for them and the ‘bighats’ to bring in their FALSE Christ and delude the ‘faithful’ under the false flag of unity …..  this is NOT REAL DISCLOSURE, this is information. What the Vatican presents as the Christ could never be the real one and if that’s not obvious to someone who has bothered to research Christianity or in particular the history and crimes of the ROMAN Catholic Church properly then there’s not much anyone can do for that persons well-being, they will go down with their false gods. Christ belongs to the meek, the noble, those with loving hearts. The essence of Christianity is sublime, virtuous and reflects empathy and integrity, unless the actions of those spreading their doctrine equal the great teachings, extreme caution is required; considering the Vatican’s crimes committed against humanity, their actions speak for themselves. And I apologise to my good noble Catholic friends who genuinely practice lives of good faith, the hierarchy is not the church, the people are.
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The Wondrous Future
What is coming in our future, whether they or people in general like it or not, whether they agree or not is irrelevant here.  It is out of the hands of the military, the media, the Vatican, they have no rights in this and it is the height of arrogance and haughtiness to think they have.  The spread of misinformation has happened and may continue for a period of time to further their agenda but it will be fleeting, there is a dismantling going on, a closing down.  The human being, or to be more specific, when the brain is tuned up and turned on, it is the doorway to the stars, the gateway into foreverness and  when I say brain I don’t mean what is normally referred to as ‘intelligence’ either. There are parts of the brain that are dormant and these receive frequencies that relate to the Alien phenomena.  Silver disks in the sky are a minute part of this whole thing and are basically just a calling card.  Real disclosure is about transformation of the mind-space, to dissolve the subconscious vision that stands in the way of perceiving who we are and what is out there in the skies and to open up to what is resonating at finer frequencies; the removal of all doubt and delusion comes from experience not from information.  It needs to be made clear that many of the craft and beings come from Inner Space as well as Deep Space; unless there is an awakening at a core level, people are just adding information to their pool of data. And yes information disclosure would ‘normalise’ the idea of aliens and life on other worlds and awaken the broader community to the fact that the history of humanity is a TOTAL fabrication but unless we grow in empathy, compassion, non-judgement, understanding, disclosure becomes just another form of infotainment; the implementation of virtue in our life and the commitment to integrity is of much greater worth than what star system a person assumes they come from, what Siddhis (yogic powers) are natural to ones star-tribe or the real fact that ones cousins may be blue or have two belly-buttons, transparent bodies or telepathic buttons on their foreheads.
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The Gods
It is no wonder that many people at the moment are scared, bewildered, the negative campaign has been powerful as the tyrants do their last waltz and gradually ‘remove’ their lower level butt-kissers and will ultimately blame others for the crimes. Fear is the food and fuel of those who don’t have humanity’s best interest at heart.
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When I look through my window of experience, stop and think deeply, a form of serenity and sensibility arises as I remind myself about the epics. I am NOT a Hindu, however it needs to be made clear that academics wrote the history of Bharat (India) for the West according to their limited thought and biased worldview.  In the Mahabharata they tell us that Krishna was sitting with the eldest brothers of the two warring factions prior to the Kurukshetra battle.  On one side a Pandava, on the other a Kaurava, read as the good guys and the lost-their-way guys. Krishna turned either side and looked at them and said “although I love you both”, he then paused eloquently, glanced back at the Pandava and further stated, “I must support you, the Dharma must be nurtured and sustained”.  Many people are aware that without the Dharma (the law of balance/righteous/noble actions) the Universes will disintegrate into chaos and in the great Cosmic Play this is not the desired outcome, the creation has come about not only so that all possibilities of creation are experienced but so the Self (the Deepest Part of Oneself) can put Love into motion and have experiences of it in a myriad of ways. And Love is not some new-age flippy floppy idea.  It is the essence of creation, the beauteous unfolding into foreverness, the inbuilt flowering of all possibilities, the dance of the cosmos, the radiant ring felt in the rising of the sun, the deep longing and resolve in being in the presence of those who are dear to us, the thing that triggers joy when people see puppies, the tingle in our hearts that is outside definition of the greatest word-smith, the taste of chocolate in our mouths, the wondrous lights in the sky at sunset, out of nothingness dreaming the future into being.
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When we look at the Ramayana story we also know that Ravana (bad dude), the master of many of the yogas, dumbass stole Sita (Rama’s beloved) and infamously made himself the enemy of Rama. At his death Ravana asked for forgiveness of Rama, this should not be understated and requires a lot of consideration.  We also know that both the great battles of Kurukshetra and the Ramayana were fought in the skies as well as on the earth and in each situation the victory was to those who upheld the Dharma. And when we go way back into other times and spaces we know Matsya the fish Avatar came to save the Vedas (the great scriptures) from under the ocean.  To many this is myth and legend but I would not be in such a hurry to limit the potentials and endless possibilities of the Universes we move in and out of, or the brilliance of the underlying super consciousness.
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And we also have Yeshua ben Josef AKA Jesus, although depicted as the crucified Christ by the unholy church, in truth he is the Risen Christ who some see in the ‘gap between the world states’ regularly wandering the Himalayas with the great yogis and sages, as well as being ever present on the spacecraft.  Although this would seem like a fantasy to many people, as the UFO/alien phenomena moves closer to the surface and the LAYERS ARE STRIPPED BACK, what is truth and what are lies will become increasingly more obvious. In some UFO circles there is a common idea that a bunch of lizards, and bigheads under the Vatican run the world governments, although this may very well be true and confirmed by some sources, in the scheme of things this idea is a touch crazier than there being a network of great sages, saints and Godmen wandering among humanity just out of the 3D view who are making a concerted effort to save humanity from themselves and the spell that blinds them from seeing past ‘the known limited social consciousness’.
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The Underlying Purpose of the Space Beings
I say this as a reminder that the interplay in our skies is not just about diversity of species but is ultimately about the raising of human consciousness where mankind throws off the limited mindset that in essence is really just solidified and agreed upon thoughts blocking the view.  This alien/UFO phenomena is not about wayward aliens destroying or destabilising and enslaving earth civilisations, although they have had great press in social media and UFO circles for decades, it is about the emergence onto the world stage of some of the beings from space who are our equals who were/are considered ‘the gods’, other beings who jumped out of super-consciousness and threw on a body like a surfer wears a wet suit and wandered into the state of unknowingness.  In other cases it is beings evolving to their next level of consciousness to live greater potentials and for others it is about dropping down onto the planet to add their vibrations to raise the frequency of mankind, and keeping in mind that as each one of these beings extracts the wisdom of his or her earth experience, it is then written to their DNA and it then filters across and out, backwards and forwards through the civilisations that they are related to.
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Humanity has been fooled for centuries, has been battered by the birth pains of evolving into a new consciousness.  It’s clear that the time has come for us to openly call in and welcome the benevolent beings from inner and outer space who have guarded, guided and mingled with humanity in an effort to make mankind ready to be part of an inter galactic brotherhood and sisterhood of beings who roam the heavens and embrace the unity in diversity that exists in the Cosmos.
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Like a rolling tsunami we can expect thousands of people from around the world to come forward now to tell their story, some will be true, some confused and misunderstood, and like any situation, others will be intentionally disruptive skeptical and deceptive, they will be easily recognisable.  Regardless of the mix of truths and fantasies, THIS IS NOT GOING AWAY and people need to be open to what is happening, else they will be in shock because it’s on our doorstep NOW.
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May all beings be happy

Tilopa 2.0 

Refining Our Radar for Truth or Deception

Published on by Tilopa 2.03 Comments

In the crazy maze of human existence on the stage of the world we live and move in we often enter into states of doubt, fear of not knowing who the good guys really are, who might be deceiving us and we are unsure who to trust. During these days where there are numerous private and other hidden agendas it does seem difficult to wade through information and arrive at conclusions about who are humanity’s allies and who are the foes masquerading as friends or even saviors.
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The Fallibility of the Known
We can use logic to resolve many things, it is a most useful tool that the human species has been gifted with; we may hear words oozing out of the mouth of politicians and those in positions of great trust but we know from experience that words and the follow-on actions often differ, betrayal is only recognised at a later date.  We can do our research and ‘follow the money’ or look at who is aligned with particular corporations, boards of directors, mega-bankers and various others, however we do also know that misinformation is streamed out through the mainstream media to create a particular feeling or ‘normal’ to later implement an agenda, also the ‘secret’ in-the-know conspiracy websites or publications feed the world a mix of truth and misinformation, the misinformation is proved a lie and the associated truth makes a gurgle sound as it goes down the sink.  Both logic and research are great tools but we can easily be misled and we find ourselves in our desperation to make the world a better place unknowingly supporting agendas that are not in our best interests but are down right dangerous.  So do we just rollover, dumb ourselves down with alcohol, recreational poisons, food, sport, piles of objects and bling, obsessions with diseases and fitness or shall we just look the other way?
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Fragility of the Civilisation
We live in a time when the world is fragile, on the precipice of great change, when madmen (if they really had the power and were permitted to do it) could annihilate the world we move in with a push of a button, when scientists in their curiosity could trigger an event that would not only impact on this planet but also those as far off as we can dream and maybe in an instant destroy unknown civilisations, when liberties are being eroded to implement hideous agendas for the covert and also publicly arrogant elite.  With all this doom, gloom and darkness of mankind bearing down on man, what on earth do we do?
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The Beauty of the World
We live on a glorious planet, nature with its wondrous living breathing ecosystems unique to itself, the glorious rising of the sun that we have for a period of time until this timeline runs out of juice and a new one starts, the colors of the birds.  The playfulness of animals, the gentle of touch of our loved ones, the tasty fruits, the dew on the grass, the ability to laugh, the sweetness of melody. When we move away from the madness of men and their games of power and self-obsession, underlying it is something that a visitor from other worlds would perceive as heaven.  We need to be reminded regularly where we ‘sit’ or more specifically where we live in the Cosmos. Earth is a living being unto itself, the Mother that she is supports us, she holds and nurtures us, if we are gentle with her she responds, if in the case of what has happened and we are reckless, she will ‘shake’ and in that ‘shakiness’ what is not aligned with her sense of being will find a new destiny to live on.  I started by writing about the crazy world and living in a time of mistrust and at this point it looks as if the focus may be hinting at environmental issues, it is intricately related but this is not about climate change, polar bears or bees.  Without undermining the need for conscious change and action on how we live and treat the environment we live and move in, I am confident that Mother Earth will take care of her Being and that doesn’t mean I don’t think we should care for the world, quite the opposite, I am a man who refused to pick flowers for most of much of my life in case I hurt them. Caring for the world around us is the same as taking care of ourselves, the way we treat ourselves is usually the way we treat those around us and the tiny field of space we move in.  As for climate change all I will say is that transparency regarding where every dollar goes ought to be a concern, else we may find that while people are sleeping, someone is taking the milk from the cow to feed their ugly monster. My prayer is “may there always be noble people in positions of power and trust.”
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Questioning Everything
When we look at anything, regardless what it is, our ‘filters’ come into play. What we have experienced, learnt or been indoctrinated with writes to our subconscious, we have subtle and overt preferences on how people should look, talk, what is the correct opinion or way to view the world.  These learned or inherited perspectives are useful but at the same time I am confident that they cannot always be trusted, it is only a small part of what I will refer to as our Being. So far I have said we can’t rely on logic, the words of others and now I am adding to the list we can’t always trust our own experience, if we take this approach to an extreme a psychologist could comfortably say there is a form of paranoia going on here.  However if we think carefully and are cautious and address these three things properly it will remind us not to be naive and believe everything we assume to be logical and unquestionable, what we are told and what our way of experiencing the world is telling us.  It is critical that we are aware of the ‘sleight of hand’ that happens around us. So what to do?
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Rethinking Sensitivity
Some people are more sensitive than others.  Although I am sensitive to the point where it becomes annoying, I am not a person who thinks sensitivity is the be all and end all of experience and that anyone who is not is ‘less enlightened’, that is straight out elitist garbage, and I will ‘call’ that delusion out.  Sometimes over sensitive people lack the ability to act, to stand up when needed because they indulge in their sensitivity.  Sensitivity is a tool for life, not something that needs to cripple us and make us over emotional.  Having said that, there is a type of sensitivity that I think holds the key to discriminating about things, people, events and courses of action.  It doesn’t matter whether someone feels like they are a being encased in something like a polar bear suit with thick layers and a pair of over-sized gumboots or they are a someone who sees purple winged unicorns (real or imaginary), the playing field is equal when it comes to our ‘radar for real feeling’.
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A Tingle up the Spine
We all have had that feeling when someone enters the room, sometimes we get a cold shiver. Or at the other extreme when we go into a meditative space like a Buddhist (or choose your flavor) temple we feel a subtle change in mood.  In the case of the person entering the room who was at the source of cold shiver in us, we may know nothing about them, their clothes could be neat clean, even impeccable, they may be well spoken, have average looking features and nothing externally that would be a give-away that would give reason for concern.  In the situation of the meditative-space it may be reasonably empty and uncluttered, very plain and have nothing that represents a world of religiosity or be in any way overtly ‘spiritual’or have anything aesthetically pleasing but still there is an inexplicable subtle change.
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The Field We Move In
Each being, in fact every living thing has a field around it, there are visual parameters but the space around a person or object has an area which is populated by what I will refer to as ‘solidified thought’, this field contains what the being is aligned with, in the same way that storage media for computers and other devices hold information, there is a grid/web/network that holds the past, the present and the tendencies for the future. When a ‘sensitive’ or what is more commonly referred to as a psychic comes into contact with an individual and does a reading, they are usually tapping in and pulling out data from this space, it holds the past, present and their known and associated potentials.  Many of the psychics will have no idea how they do it, they may have a story that is true or false on the method they use but the underlying idea is that somehow they get their result and trust it.  Occasionally we encounter a seer who works outside the common methodology used, however for continuities sake I will not enter the other possibilities of ‘reading’ what is out of sight.
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When we are in the meditation-space, what has happened is over period of time as each individual has come into the environment they have gradually emptied the field in that space.  This works in reverse to a busy day at the beach, when people go home from a sunny day rolling in the waves and getting their butt tanned you will see litter scarring the natural beach environment and it has a dirtied, cluttered sensation about it.  When meditators  attempt to go into a meditative state, the process is about detaching from thought, letting it rise or fall; this action works like a thought-vacuum-cleaner.  In the room where meditation has happened, at a subtle level there is a deep change invisible to the eye, it is ‘touched’ and experienced at a deeper level of consciousness.
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Buying Into the Story
If I come back a little closer to the original idea of this article, I was discussing discrimination and how to make sense in a crazy world, how to be able to tell whether someone is truthful and whether they have an agenda that is detrimental to us, humanity or the world around us.  At a surface level we have emotional reactions to things, we may see an image and suddenly be outraged, if it has a story with it, whether it be true or false, in an emotional state we may become further outraged, if we have a story already imprinted which comes from our personal history or cultural upbringing, the image and the story will mix with that bias and then we not only may get emotional, we may act in a particular manner in response to it. If we are crackers we could blow up someones letter box or graffiti their car.  Much of what we see in the media and advertising is emotive based ‘baiting’, whether a news article or what is being advertised is genuine or not isn’t the issue, what is relevant here is that our emotions can easily stand in the way of feeling the world or the truth of a matter properly.  Human beings are very easily swayed.
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Droid Mentality
REAL intuition grabs its data from outside our logical world and is not limited to the ‘known’.  I am reminded of the limitation of droids in some of the Sci Fi movies and Spock the Vulcan from Star Trek. People need a way to discriminate between surface ‘touchy feely’ intuition which relates to the emotions, and the way of feeling the world, beings and environment.  To someone who has not developed a deep-feeling-sense they would look the same, the world would be divided into two:

(1)  Stuff we know because it is believed to be true and is confirmed by our education (and that’s a variable) and from the zone of Classic Physics (read as: Old World Thought) that has many truths but limitations.

(2) The stuff that relates to dreamers, Tarot readers, fantasizers and people who have too much time on their hands or those who have smoked a lot of weed. (This is not a criticism, I am just creating a polarity of two extremes).

Both those angles have their place in the world of mice and  men but there is option (3) and that’s where we bypass option (1) and (2).  Option (3) is the one that I find myself living by most of the time.

Option (1) is best used for most tasks like when crossing the street it would be insane to close our eyes and feel our way between the cars, or when driving under a low bridge we’d be best to do a basic spatial calculation that the truck is going to fit else it won’t be pretty.

Option (2) is useful because imagination and meandering thought is quite a beautiful thing but I do know from experience, if we get caught in fantasy and emotions they blur our vision and we lose our groundedness.
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Option (3) is something that is based in Emptiness, the same Empty state we encounter in real or deep meditation, there may also be thought present but there is no attachment to or over-interest in thought, instead we are absorbed in the space, in the same way that sky doesn’t grasp a cloud and lets it rise, fall and dance without a fuss.  As soon as we allow thought to arise from the subconscious with its history and partial-knowing, what we end up with is a filter sitting between deep-intuition and whatever truth may be.  Truth has a sensation about it and I am not talking about any supposed Spiritual Truth or great answer to the Universes questions, I mean passing truths that the politicians may be lying.  Often it is easy to research and find out if people in power are lying but based on my observation, many people are supporting agendas that look good on the surface but underneath they totalitarian. In the same way that a religious text can be altered to suit an agenda, people end up unwittingly and naively handing over their allegiance to false Gods and Cults because their intuition never RANG loud enough to warn them, so how to sort this and develop deep-intuition?
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Deep Intuition
EMPTINESS
I have already stated or implied that we need a relationship with Emptiness. This is easy to develop regardless of what cultural or religious background we come from or associate with.  Buddhism has had a focus on transformation of the mind, whereas mainstream Christianity is rooted in faith.  If we do a little exploration we will see there are subcultures of Christianity who explore deep contemplation, there is no practical reason that a person couldn’t meditate on the name of Jesus if that was their flavour.  When it comes to meditation, we do not need to dress up and pretend we are Indians and use Hindi Mantras as many people do, yes beyond doubt they are potent, nor do we need to wear white or head straight to the crystal shop and fill the house with bling.   If someone is not from a religious background there are many tools in the public domain for relaxation, we can leave Spirituality out of the mix. All that is required is a simple method without a whole lot of baggage and a practical regular commitment to taking time out.  If we are always ‘inside’ the world it’s difficult to see what is going on, our story, bias and preferences are too strong. Deep or even shallow meditation will ‘extract us’ a little.
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GRATITUDE
Fortunately gratitude has become popular and feels better than some of the other fashionable things such as eating kale or oil swishing.  In an age of self-obsession the emergence of developing a relationship with something bigger than our imaginary sense of I and understanding we are part of something that shares its abundance freely with us is in itself humbling.  Everything is alive and giving thanks seems the least we can do.
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HATERS
If we have a hate for those who are different to us in thought, appearance and action or even those who harm us with their political agendas, their violence and their hideous actions that enslave us in some way, we end up becoming part of their network of power, we become subservient to them, the underlying negative agenda empowers itself by our response.  I consider recognising this issue as a critical element in self-transformation.  “Turning the other cheek” is a seed idea that needs to be unpacked and contemplated.  It does not mean that we should not act, not create boundaries, or speak up when necessary, it is about our thinking. Our thoughts affect the world and if we add to the ocean of hate it creates additional psychic smog around the planet.   The smog of hate impacts on everyone and all of nature.  If we rise in a state of love then hate has no enemy.  The opposite of love is fear not hate.  It is fear that needs addressing.  If hate has no enemy it turns on itself in the same manner the opponent of an Aikido Master defeats himself in battle through his own self importance, stupidity and violent tendencies.
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FEELING
 As we know, there is a surface emotional feeling sense we have that sabotages our deeper sensitivity, it is reasonably simple to explain and even easier if I create a visual example. If I was to break it down a little we can visualise a molecule and picture it as a a bubble. Imagine that each molecule of our being has a ‘stability point’ a sense of equilibrium that maintains its shape and state of balance, like calm water on a sunny day, it has a relaxed gentle sense of movement.  Under normal circumstances in life, the field-shape within the molecule will tilt a little as it goes about its everyday business, when our moods change a little, it reacts like the way water gets a little ripple in it if something light is dropped in it.  If we are traumatised, the particles inside the molecule may bounce off the walls and be pushed way out of shape resembling a damaged pin pong ball, the combination of trillions of these in our being make us feel unstable and at times we find that the instability completely overcomes us, the expression “off the rails” is a good analogy. We become so engulfed by the sensation of internal chaos that our attention is moved out of our natural stillness and equilibrium, our central point of awareness becomes unfocused and foggy.  When we are angry we are in a state of agitation, it is impossible to think clearly, we lose our sensitivity completely, the molecule ping pong balls within are bashing against each other. When we are very emotional and in a state of deep sorrow we become numb, drowned. In a state of joy, the ripples in our being overcome us, regardless of the wonder of the feeling which impacts on our health in a positive way, our vision can also blurred, the molecules are dancing out of control.
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The sensations of joy and sorrow come and go, depending on our ability to recover as we move along the timeline of our life, they all impact in different ways, they can empower us or we may get lost in the endless maze.

If we have developed a type of mindfulness to allow us to extract ourselves a little from the passing show of emotions we will have an advantage in being able to discriminate between natural feeling responses generated from every day existence plus our compiled ocean of experiences and then our intuition will come from outside time and the ‘already known’.
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When we look clearly at the events in the world we move in, we will see that things and events are being translated by and agreed upon by the greater community to be a certain way, this common agreement that is arrived at will at one extreme create a language for basic communication and at the other end a slave-mentality that places parameters about what is or isn’t true, this slave-mentality turns deep thinkers and visionaries into outsiders, nutters and in some cases people are considered to be a threat. An example of what can happen is the Vatican’s assassination of Giordano Bruno
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Truth has a ring to it and it is unmistakable; falsity has a doubt about it, it brings with it a type of confusion and slightly unsettling feeling, and it may even have a sense of self-righteousness and a mission.  Alertness is required, if we are not discerning we may find ourselves supporting agendas that are treacherous, destabilising to ourselves and others, we may end up undermining good men and women and see them as our enemies all because the radar deep inside us is covered over by emotions and a fabricated story being fed and sustained by the greater community’s enslaved limited social consciousness.
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These are treacherous times as we exit the previous civilisation and move forward into the glorious unfolding one.
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May we always be kind to ourselves and those we encounter
May we always be understanding of others
May the part of us that seeks truth and wisdom cut through the fog of misinformation
May we seek unity in diversity
May all beings be happy and uninhibited to follow their dreams
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Tilopa 2.0

 

God Doesn’t Have Problems

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We live in a world that seems to have an endless stream of  chaos, mad governments, injustices, violence, suicides, social imbalance, the rich get more toys, the poor crave basics, really bad coffee and many people see no end to the suffering.
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I live on a busy Melbourne street, the other morning a guy was doing somersaults on the road, oddly enough hardly anyone noticed.  I wasn’t sure whether to report the event to help keep the guy safe from himself but when I thought it through, logic told me the fellow survived this long without my intervention, so I just let it roll.  (‘Scuse the pun)
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The Wise Ones
We are very fortunate in our lives, wise people come and go.  Sometimes we miss them; if we are alert they become part of our transformation, they leave us gems to ponder, it may be years before their wisdom unpacks.  I had a very great teacher.  Some people want the sparkly-eyed guru or master in Indian or Japanese pyjamas or dressing gown, to each their own.  But I know from experience,  often the truly wise pass us by without a fuss, no exhibition of spirituality or devotion, they can touch our lives very deeply.  My greatest teacher acted and looked quite normal, it wasn’t obvious, he was understated … when I had a conversation with him about the Dharma or consciousness, I found the mat was pulled out from underneath me whenever I sat chatting with him.  Transformation is about our known world dissolving, it has an uncomfortableness about it.  Many of us eventually come to the conclusion that our story of the world is not exactly correct, this can be troublesome to say the least, we hold ourselves together because we assume coming apart is a problem. But coming apart is the doorway to transformation.
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Dialogue with the Wise
During a conversation with my dear friend he once said to me, “God doesn’t have problems.”  Oh okay, yeah right… Embedded in this simple one liner was a healing balm. Obviously if someone doesn’t have ANY concept of a God it won’t mean much and will be bypassed.  My childhood God died years ago, the bloke with the white beard and floating entourage keeping a sense of order and handing out door passes into heaven to the good guys and go straight to jail cards, do not collect a hundred dollars and get ready for an experience of hot coals for the others.  Fear of God or a negative outcome keeps a lot of people in check.   I guess even without a God watching out for any misdemeanours or serious breaches, people would probably still realise that being a dumb-ass wont get them too far in the long run and a sense of natural order will come about.   But my viewpoint of God is different, not better, I said different.
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My friend said, “God doesn’t have problems.”  So do I make him an authority on God?  We know from experience many Gods have come and gone, civilisations sunken under the oceans and they buried their deities with them, wars fought over different religious ideologies, crimes committed against humanity while forcing a religious elitist agenda.  So God doesn’t have problems?
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Religious – Maybe, Maybe Not
I guess I will have to step out of the land of the Gods and come back to myself and attempt to do the impossible, rethink what God might be, temporarily place the mystery into a box and deal with the ‘doesn’t have problems’.  We do know religions at times can be a problem and we also know there are many good kind happy religious people; and also there are people without religions who have problems and where as others live beautiful abundant lives as atheists.  A healthy minded atheist will ask the right questions, an annoying one has a cult mentality.
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I had always in the past referred to myself a religious man; and mind you one who is at odds with all religions, the arrogance of the clergy, their crimes against children, the exhibitions of devotion and flaws within their twisted-to-suit-them scriptures, the holy elitism and superiority complex they have in relation to non believers and outsiders.   I will maintain that loosely I am a religious man so I can sort the issue and explain why the gem of wisdom has been so critical in my life.
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Lighting up the Shadows
When we have a traumatic or negative experience we generally look at the shadow and this is a very reasonable normal human response.  Losing ones wallet, or breaking a leg is never really a fun experience, an emotional reaction is not unexpected.  As a rule we don’t question a normal emotional response to an experience unless we are one of those people working on ‘mindfulness’ or some other Buddhist technique.  There are people who have had the experience of missing their plane flight and later found out  the plane crashed. Or in other situations somebody’s new heart-throb date didn’t turn up but by coincidence they met there future partner instead.  There are numerous ‘follow on’ events that come out of what we may originally perceive as negative events.  I am not saying we do not need to feel the emotional response to experiences;  however, if we see them as transitional and things to ponder or doorways to other experiences we will have much happier lives. Developing a type of thinking that can maintain a sense of balance is definitely a worthwhile quest.
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My Response to Trauma
When my oldest boy died, like every loving parent and balanced human being I was broken, confused and also I felt betrayed by my God.  How could MY God do this to me? It was a moment when I totally forgot that there was a natural order to human existence and my sense of feeling safe with my imaginary or real God disintegrated.  But thinking more broadly life does its thing with or without me and it doesn’t take a University degree to know full well that people come and go from planet earth every minute.  If we look from above and I am not saying God is above, if we step away from the small window we look through, lift the whole roof off and see the open sky, our perspective changes.  When I look at the passing of a human being it is quite normal to see it as tragic, there is a sense of loss, we hurt, we bang walls, yell, feel abandoned, the ache in the chest is unbearable, we seem crazy, everything is fragile, we are vulnerable.  But then if I look through the other eyes from the totality of beings there is not such a problem, nature which we are part of has a way of regenerating, the seasons and people come and go.  Look at the pavements or between the stones and rocks, grass and weeds gradually start to appear after a while; when there is stagnant water the rains eventually come and a sense of harmony returns, the clouds pass at will and the beauty of their aloofness is natures poetry.
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The Way Out
We often get stuck in a world view that is bordering on self-obsession, attachment to the way we assume things should be, we push against the river of life and tread water.  The Tao Te Ching reminds us that the Tao (Way) is inexhaustible.  Our exhaustion comes from thinking, when we sort the thinking the actions will come into harmony.  We have removed ourselves so far from nature, there are layers protecting us from life; we require a constant body temperature, walls to shield us from the outside, many of us like a tepid world – not too hot not to cold, we quickly run to safe zones when we feel we are out of our depth.  And yes there are adventurers who push the boundaries.
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Those words “God doesn’t have problems” for me was an invitation to think outside the box that holds the human drama in place, a reminder that even in suffering there is more than that moment going on, the totality requires change for life to unfold, the rising and falling of events on the screen of life are the natural order; and I am not one of these people who believe that we are puppets on a string that some giant God manipulates for his pleasure, that is something I cannot subscribe to, I do not see ourselves as slaves, we are creators.  However, there is an underlying TOTALITY that does have a loose unfolding destiny that is not written but it feels its way into forever-ness; as constellations arise and dissolve over eons, the various species of beings adapt to the unending journey of love.
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Although my emotional responses are real, valid, very human, the wisdom of “God not have problems” allows me to relax a little, to trust in something that I cannot define but feel in the depth of Silence, and what I see in the stars that scatter the sky like drops of paint on a living canvas…I can step away from the ‘imaginary me’ with its story, its tragedies and feelings of lack and hard done by-ness and when I feel ready, jump out of the prison-house of the known.
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Other People’s Gods
And if I changed hats and said there was a God that many others have, one who shapes the destiny of people and engraves it into the palm of the hand and follow His Will, well then I would know still know that I was safe, there was a sense of order that I can’t quite understand or see yet and trust that time will reveal its wisdom.  However, I am not that person, that is not my worldview or vision, I will come back to myself and recognise I have choices, there are options in the way I live my life and respond to the passing fortunes and events that emerge out of Emptiness that sometimes surprise me and at other times leave me feeling fragile, inquisitive, joyous and curios.
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May all beings in all worlds be happy
May all people live in love
May all suffering fall away 
May all beings be free from the agendas of others who lack in compassion

Tilopa 2.0

 

To Love or Not to Love

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Out of Emptiness emerged something extraordinary, a sense of awareness of being.  Wise men, fools, dreamers, the religiously arrogant, philosophers, liars, poets, mystics and sages have written much between that (imaginary) first moment way outside time when the awareness said, “something is doing something.”  We shall let all beings have their story, leave them be and attempt to come into our present state of awareness.
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An Uncluttered Present
This present, the supposed NOW that some people speak of is colored by the past. The experiencer has a history, deep in the subconscious and expressing on the screen of life as we know it is a story of who we are, concepts about the way the world works, the possibles and impossibles.  If we are clear that generally the NOW that many people talk about has baggage, there will be a slight shift in awareness, a deepening, we will be more inclined to stop for a brief moment and not just scroll past it like we do with social media posts.  If we robotically say Be Here Now and make assumptions and think that we have it sorted, it is possible that the flippant attitude that we apply to many of the other things in our lives will once again prevent us from digging in.  Constantly abandoning the past is something that can be done, it may be gradual, for some it may come as a quantum leap, there may be a light-bulb moment, it’s then that the work begins.
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That Elixir
By nature or better I say by habit, we are continuously calling up what we know, all those things that have impacted on us emotionally and also our understandings / conjectures about the reality / the world space we move in.   As humans, due to the cultures we are born into we have subtle prejudices. These ‘knowns’ are what stand in the way of LOVE.
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Love, that old word that has more definitions than a caterpillar has legs; love, that thing that people seek changing partners like an evening at a square dance in a country hall; love, that elixir that brings fierce looking grown men to their knees to weep buckets of tears; love, that wondrous misinterpreted something that is elusive as the quest for what God may or may not be.
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About ten years ago in brief a moment of ecstatic-ness I wrote on a blog post:

“LOVE, has no boundaries or judgements. It embraces the totally of all things born and still unborn. It waits patiently for us to take her hand and follow her to our greatest potential, it forgives our shortcomings and speaks quietly to us when we need her most. Love creeps through our life often unnoticed but catches us as we fall. Love is our only true friend, our faithful companion that walks with us from age to age, beyond the graves.” 
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Also the great sage Shams teacher of the Mystic poet Rumi tells us:
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The chemistry of mind is different from the chemistry of love. The mind is careful, suspicious, he advances little by little. He advises “Be careful, protect yourself” Whereas love says “Let yourself, go!” The mind is strong, never falls down, while love hurts itself, falls into ruins. But isn’t it in ruins that we mostly find the treasures? A broken heart hides so many treasures.
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In those words there is plenty to ponder.  Indulgent romantics will focus on the ‘broken heart’ always licking their wounds as if the world owes them something.  A Buddhist will remind us that attachment is our enemy.  Alan Watts, a great carrier of Zen to the West will echo the words ‘let yourself go’.  Shams wakes us up to the fact that the world of the mind and that of love are in contradiction.  Great men and woman know that we can only be a slave to one.  Take your pick, the mind or love.
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The Unknowing Mind
The mind likes to think it knows everything, it prides itself on information.  Love knows nothing.  Love dives in boots and all, it takes chances, it always stands on the threshold, right on the edge of the precipice.  Some people say love and hate are opposites, it is not hate that is the opposite of love, it is fear.  Fear is the gateway to love.  Fear must fall, it has no place in the world of love apart from being that which dissolves itself when love ultimately flowers.
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Love is Grand
When love becomes ‘personal’ it has a wondrous place but let’s move away from here, not because it has no value, self-indulgence only holds a small spot in the universe, we need to think big in the same way that the beings on this planet are only a dot compared to the other intelligent civilizations in the cosmos.   As confusing and as misconstrued as the word ‘God’, love has its interpreters and impostors.  The holier-than-thou religious babble nonsense about love, meantime looking down on their brothers and sisters, out-casting them with their hideous doom and gloom prophecies, and there are those New Agers who delight in ‘one day karma will get them back’, fully forgetting their own minds are filled with hatred and spiritual elitism.  Their version of love is poisonous, it has conditions, “be like me” and we can add to it “if you don’t, my God will get you you evil wretch”.  They fully forget the journey that got them to their present.
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The Alchemy called Life
On the journey into and through love there is accountability but it is not revengeful, it is self-perpetuating.  The great Gods, the word God here translates as those Beings who have journeyed out of original consciousness ions ago and learnt through experience, climbed out of the states of slumber and forgetfulness and become wondrous creative Beings with understandings that are incomprehensible to human intelligence, these great Gods do not have judgement.  They have patience, the virtue of acceptance of the diversity, they know that to get to be the extraordinary Gods that they are is not instantaneous, it is a trial by fire, it is alchemy, removing the gross metal to reveal the gold.
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Returning to Ourself
If we come back to ourselves and ask the right questions.  Who do I hate? What makes me feel better than others? What behaviors of others do I despise? Who do I look down upon? Why is my tribe, caste or social class better than others?  Why is my spirituality more pure and enlightened than others?  Do we see others as a lost cause and trailer trash? We will start to see how much love we have, when we hold the mirror up we will see our shadow and start to see that our love is selective. We can quote scriptures, speak in a manner that sounds pleasing to others, eat the ‘right’ foods, be part of animal liberation movements and do a lot of things that put us into the nice guy category but it’s an incomplete model of love.  Love is much deeper than this.
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Love is there in tenderness with our beloved, sure; it is in our empathy when something wells up inside us and we go past our normal limitations to help others; yes we have it for our families and pets.  But it is more.  Love is in acceptance of what we don’t like, learning not to despise the wickedness of human nature, and that doesn’t mean to delight in it, it is in understanding that the consciousness that underlies the totality manifests in ways that are incomprehensible to us.  We are quick to judge, often forgetting the path that leads us to now, not remembering that we have a story, that we were at some point whether in this life or way back in time in some other place we expressed in ways that were not kind, we betrayed, we hurt, we put ourselves first, we have added to suffering of others.  Love allows other things to be and that does not mean we have no boundaries in our lives and have a form of idiot-compassion that makes us say yes when the best solution is no.  It’s not just in our actions, it’s about our thoughts, do we vilify others just because they are different, because their wisdom is a dormant seed in their consciousness, that due to the experiences in their lives closed themselves down which lead them to actions that reflect a lack of self care or anger and animosity to others.  Is our ‘I am better-ness’ arrogant?  Are we at times the thing that we hate?
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Love arrives in a very strange way; it is common to hear the words “we cannot truly love until we love ourselves fully’; maybe not fully, that type of thinking leads to a feeling of worthlessness, never good enough, it creates an inverted ego.  Neither the ego or its upside down I-hate-me inverted twin have substance.  There is an open secret that we know but forget, every moment is new and this is an opportunity for new growth, the past season is over and although the winter may have been bitter, the autumn of our lives had a mix of joy and misfortune, the spring of new potential constantly remerges and there are new beginnings.  We can abandon our past and extract the wisdom of experience and wander with dignity into foreverness, touching everything on the way with kindness, creating a trail that brings joy to others where possible, being gentle on the world around us.
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I awake to a new day
Although the unborn is unseen out of view
I trust in the benevolence of the Universe
I am gentle, in this is my strength
I can bend and adapt to the changing fortunes that emerge
I am an embodiment of everything I have ever dreamed to be
I walk with dignity into foreverness

Tilopa 2.0

 

Rearranging Time and Healing the Past and Future

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All of humanity suffers.  We can ask the experts like Buddha, phone a friend as people do in a TV quiz show or better still, we don’t need to think too hard to recall our own experiences of doom and gloom. If we need a reminder to really confirm the idea we could go to the slums, visit the homeless to see and feel their world. We can if it is appropriate for us serve the community to help pad the suffering of others a little and at the same time by serving others it will take the focus away from ourselves and this will also warm our hearts.  We know there are many great healers out there, some work within the field of Western medicine, others take different natural or left field approaches. From my experience although the body goes ouch and requires maintenance, bringing our thoughts into a sense of order, taming the ‘bull’ of the mind is critical.  I found something that works for me and I will never go back into the dark night of the soul.  I will attempt to explain it as simply as possible.
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Reconsidering What is Normal
As a general rule, human beings have a view of time which is linear, it comes from a number of sources:

From our natural conditioning
The education we receive from those around us in the environment we are born into.
What we have in our subconsciousness in our DNA inherited from our ancestors.
The agreed upon human consciousness.
The database of experiences from our journey through the corridors of the Cosmos.

The normal view of time that we experience is start at A travel to Z and in-between there is a splattering of events in a sequential order. It would seem fair not to question this sense of order and accept this agreed upon version of time, that is unless you had explored quantum physics, suddenly things go a little skewiff and the world that we know will start to shatter.  There is plenty of material to study on the subject if needed but I would like to keep this simple.
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The A to Z of limited time
As it goes, if we are a healthy person we will be reasonably comfortable with our dreams of the future, we go about our everyday life, maybe work a job and seek some sort of greater position in the hierarchy of the world, we may study for a University degree of some sort or if we are a musician or artist we could strive to eventually be a master of our instrument or art-form. This is an acceptable way to live, we seek success and and make efforts to become more than what we imagine ourselves to be at different points of our lives and go on to greater things.  If life slaps us we may not be able to meet the outcomes of our dreams and could stumble through our days with an overwhelming sense of failure, feeling totally unfulfilled, we end up pushing up daisies and further down the known timeline eventually become food for other creatures.  Whether we meet our life’s goals or not, the time sequence A to Z is the dominating foundation that most of mankind uses to measure events. Contrary to popular opinion as bizarre as it may sound, I am confident from my own experience the A to Z timeline is not the only option and a number of other people I have met are also feeling that the fine old Swiss timepieces are out of sync or at times meaningless.
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Dream Fixing
I will sidetrack for a moment.  Some years ago I had a recurring dream that was very disturbing, no matter what I did it would come back and scare me.  Fortunately I have a friend who is very wise, he has worked as a Psychologist for years so I ran the problem past him.  He advised me to use a simple technique of imagining I was in the nightmare and suggested I take a trusted imaginary friend/Buddha/Jesus/or other option with me into a conscious recalled version of the dream.  I did this a few times and have never had that dream again.  This simple method of dream-changing got me thinking about rewiring my brain or at least the ‘body of thought’, and this has opened up the gateway to deep change in my life.  In summary, all I needed to do was go back into the dream in my imagination, recall the details and observe the situation I was in while in the presence of someone I felt safe with.
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The World of Smoke and Mirrors
Intuitively I realised regardless of the simplicity of the technique how potent it was and began to consider how else I could use it to ‘fix things’. I started to look at the trauma I had experienced in my life and started to dig back through my memories.
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One thing that we are all familiar with is how our memories can differ, when we ask a number of people about ‘what happened’, they will all tell a slightly different story. When I saw my first UFO from the outside, I was with three other people, none of us saw the same thing but we all saw something, the variations were fascinating.  We also know when people give a description to police after a crime event, chances are some will be adamant about what they saw regardless that all others have a differing opinion, the solution they usually take is to go with the general consensus and let the case rest. Often what happens in the case of trauma and abuse is people have a still-frame version of events and in order to put their thoughts at rest, they will fill in the gaps; people know something happened but the detail may be corrupted by the imagination but there will be enough written to the memory to cause enough damage, the emotions get in the way and derail the experiencer of abuse and it becomes difficult to function.
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Rewiring the Past
What emerged from this simple one-off dream healing technique is something that changed me forever, I dont say this lightly.  Like many people I have had a series of traumas in my life, the type of things that people often don’t recover from.  I had a brainwave and thought I’d give an idea a try.  I remembered two critical events in my life as a child and teenager.  These were situations where someone turned up at the events I was concerned about and NOBODY would know what was going on, without going into detail in both cases I was in serious danger, these events scarred me emotionally for many years after.  Being a person who is prepared to go outside the square, I felt I could find a solution to what troubled me.

The Accidental Time Traveller
Each night I started lying quietly in a semi meditative state and going back through my life and taking my older wiser self to visit the events that had disturbed me.  The process was rather simple:

I removed all distractions such as phone, made sure the stove was off and told the world to go away :
Lay on bed, made sure I felt safe and comfortable
Called up an overview of the event to my memory
Called imaginary friend-helper (in my case it was my future wiser self)
Focused on the event
Whenever I felt a little uncomfortable I looked to my friend for support
Consciously walked through what I could recall and watched my younger self in the experience
If I felt too uncomfortable I would close the session
Over a period of days I kept going back until I felt I didn’t need to enter that particular experience any more

I found that I became a lot lighter in my every day waking life and not so troubled by my past.
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Making Sense of the Nonsensical
Some of the following may sound reasonable but other concepts would seem illogical to a number of people. My logic here was:
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Events of the past write information to the subconscious
The world is not as solid as we think it is but is constantly reconstructing itself moment to moment
We are co-creators of the environments we move in and the idea that God is pulling the strings undermines our well-being and dis-empowers us
We can update and rewrite the information stored in our memory by visiting our past
Rewiring our ‘relationships with past events’ opens up new experiences that we would have missed and changes the attitudes we have about the present
The past events work like a filter that allows us to only see a small percentage of what is happening around us
The present state of our subconscious thoughts creates the emerging future
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With the above in mind here’s what I consider happens and although it may not make sense would seem incredulous, a person does not need to believe what I am about to say. Regardless of my explanation it is reasonable to assume ‘something worked’. In two of the traumatic experiences as a child and teenager a man turned up who I now recognise as the present/future ‘me’.  He stepped in and stopped the events which were going on.  In one case I was being severely harassed by some people and NOBODY apart from my girlfriend at the time knew anything about what was going on and there was no possible way she could have organised someone to help me. During this event which impacted for days I was terrified, out of balance,  a man arrived went to visit the people and requested the harassment to stop, it ceased immediately.  In the other case I was in a serious abusive situation as a child and who I refer as the ‘future me’ came into the room, created great havoc and chased the men out.  This may in some way sound like an imaginary misunderstanding of events but without going into detail about the circumstances there is no way anyone else from the normal waking every day 3D world we are in could have been my rescuer.  I am confident beyond a doubt that the future me went back in time and interrupted the flow of events exactly as I envisaged it, even though it may seem absurd.  However, regardless of who it was, here is how it works.
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The Tree of Time
If we see ourselves as a garden it will be easy to articulate the process.  We, like any garden will have numerous trees and plants growing, in this case we can assume it to be a jungle and is survival of the fittest.  Each one of the major experiences in our lives is a seed of a future tree.  If we experience loving events it will impact on us and soften our heart, from this will grow tree with good fruit in the future, if we have a traumatic stressful moment it will generate a plant that is in some way poisonous at a future time. If our ‘garden’ gets too cluttered with poisonous plants, everything that is tasty, nutritious or for our benefit will be strangled and the joy of life will be lost.
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When we consider that the seeds and roots are in the past and grow into the future, by carefully going back to the major events of our lives with some type of imaginary beloved who we feel safe with, we can tell our younger selves that we will be okay in the future and that we are going to make it and live a beautiful life of wondrous experiences.  We can also go back to the more joyous or loving events and feel the sensation that they give off.  This feeling the sensation will strengthen the ‘trunk’ that goes into the future present, by doing this we can restore the balance of harmony within ourselves.
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Rewiring the Future
Although the future is unborn, the seeds and roots of it are in the present.  As we can go into the past to change our ‘relationship’ with it, we can also create still-frames in our consciousness to move into in the future.  It works like a blue print and creates a definite ‘something’ to manifest, even though it is nebulous it will solidify if we don’t try and control the events between where we are and what is in the template; if we feel the joy of it and this doesn’t need to be a real joy, it can be joy like the equivalent of a forced-smile; the part of us that creates uses the emotional sensations as food for what will appear in the future. I learnt some time back that when you get out of bed of a morning it is good to stretch and smile regardless how you may feel.  The brain sends the message through the body that it’s a good day emerging.  Also as soon as waking, we can turn our first couple of thoughts around to positive, it will help structure our day, if we don’t do this, we will be playing catch-ups trying to re-balance from niggling negative thought.
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Keeping it Simple
This is a simple version of what I know works.  If I went into detail about moving along our life’s timeline and/or jumping off it, or more specifically if I discussed how it sits inside our Greater Mind, it would probably not sound credible; or if I discussed the numerous events and shifting or manipulating our timeline or being on multiple timelines it would probably sound absurd.  We are an unfolding consciousness and the process is like a flower opening.
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A wise person once said, “Be careful what you ask for.” I will add to it, “but if you are gentle and loving to yourself, if you FEEL worthy of good fortune, the genies lamp will be found.”

May All Beings Be Happy – NOW!

Tilopa 2.0 

 

Leaving the Guru or Cult

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There would barely be a man or woman alive who hadn’t at some time suffered the heartache of leaving a relationship, feeling let down, cheated on or have had the light-bulb moment when you say to yourself “this ain’t gonna work.”
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The Cyclone Path of Cults
Over many years I have seen the (supposed) Spiritual path littered with casualties; sometimes it’s because we have grown and the ‘teachings’ no longer serve us.  At other times we may realise that everyone around us is just crackers, clones walking around parrot fashioning words that are not based in their personal experience, borrowed from books and senior cult members.  Sometimes there is the very common story of the rumor that you don’t want to believe, the guru is sleeping with your friend or what you thought was a sacred Tantric experience between you and the guru turned out to be a situation where you were part of his harem.  If I hadn’t seen so much of it over many years I might be a little more reserved or polite in the way I talk about those issues.
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Not all gurus are fakes, I have a short list of heroes.  But there are many who are delusional; then there are those who had some type of Satori (awakening) and decided it was their duty to serve mankind and set up shop, they were well intentioned due to some profound breakthrough but didn’t realise they were just in the kindergarten stage. This heading out into the world to teach at an early stage is fraught with danger. Regardless of whether the time to move on is because of heartache, bewilderment,  or whether it’s because the Indian pajamas got too tight, there is generally a deep emotional response.
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Handing Over
One of the big problems we have with being part of a group, cult, sect or religious congregation is in many situations we forget to think for ourselves and the group mentality reinforces ideas, there is a strength in numbers and seems to confirm something even though it may be untruth. The ‘it’s all His Will’, ‘I am just the servant’, ‘This is what God wants me to do’, ‘I got a message from the Master’; although I could write some logical thoughtful dialogue to put forward an argument to support each of those statements, in essence they are all about handing over, total submission and in that is as always the potential for abuses of power.  And no doubt someone would say ‘yes I am handing over to God’. Regardless if it is fact or fiction, truth or it may be a heap of garbage, there comes a time when people say ‘I’m grabbing my rucksack and I’m out of here’
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The Strings of Attachment
Standing at the gate heading out, the fellow initiates, disciples have a deep sadness in their eyes at your parting. A lost soul heading out, a few would mumble in agreement “he/she will be back”.
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Transition time, leaving the nest is always challenging, by nature many of us are scared of the unknown, we like to feel safe in the familiar, even if it hurts.  Some people like an unknown adventure and do extreme sports, personally I feel that extreme sports are more about the flash of lightning in the brain, the rush, not so much about the unknown. When a young person finishes his or her studies or if things become too difficult in the home environment, unsettling, some just say good riddance  but finding ones way in the world can be scary.  Not all people who join Spiritual groups and Religions do so for spiritual reasons and i am not saying that people aren’t seeking a philosophical resolve, many join because of a need for community and belonging, the teachings make some sort of sense and may reflect good values, so it seems reasonable to become part of something that makes one feel good or is far better than the pain that is attached to us or our loneliness.  It seems natural that people want to BELONG, have a sense of family, to find refuge.  If we are familiar with Buddhism,  we would be aware of the three Gems, take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha (the assembly /community); there is a sensible reason for this because good company makes a less troublesome journey through life.  We know from experience that some people seem to bring with them a whirlwind of chaos.  Joining a community is reasonable but we also know they can be prison houses.
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Dragging Stuff with Us
Wherever there is more than one person there is the potential for differences, in fact just being with oneself is enough for conflict to arise 🙂  When the cult or community no longer fits and we exit, we take a piece of it with us as we go out the door.  The underlying principle of attachment is really about placing things in our subconscious mind, if we have had years of indoctrination it will go deep into us. We may keep the beads, the statues, the pictures, the prayers or even part of the designer language, it’s all legacy stuff we drag with us through life.  I know hundreds of people who have belonged to the Hare Krishna community (Iskcon) and they vary in attitudes about their relationship to their former community, some are no longer interested in Krishna in any way, many of the others still behave as if they are part of the community even though they went through the out-door years back.  We see similarities in behavour with those who have been Buddhist monks or nuns.
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It is extremely difficult to disentangle, people fall very deeply into religious groups and they associate God with the group, where a major problem arises is the joint relationship with cult and God creates the feeling that leaving the cult implies at some level that they are leaving God, the Buddha, Krishna, Christ or whoever the form or formless God may be.  There is no shortage of people who will emerge out of nowhere when going through the out-door to remind a person that the journey out into the wilderness away from the cult is a betrayal of God, you are going to be crossed off the list of God’s elect and damnation is heading your way. Depending on how brainwashed the group or the individual believers are, the harder they will push to keep you in the fold.
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It can be subtle, it will play on our thoughts, when we have been in a group for a long time we start to think the behaviors and religious practices are truly what God or the Buddha wants, when we stop doing the rituals, the prayers, the mantras, the headstands 🙂 or other crazy stuff there is a feeling that God will be disappointed.  What usually happens is people do a bit of a spring clean,  out goes the white or ochre robes, but the beads might stay hidden from view.  The picture of the guru gets burned in the backyard but the name he gave you ‘Chiiti-Chitti-Bang Bang’ stays as it’s too hard to undo the world relationships around you, after going through the complex process of changing from Johnno to Chiiti Chitti, the thought of having to give an explanation of how come “Johnno’s back’ seems too exhausting.  The mantras get adjusted to something more universal, no more saying “Guru Joe Blogs”, it becomes “Krishna Ram Krishna Ram”  The vegetarian diet sticks but you hide the eggs when your ‘spiritual’ friends come around. The saris get cut up and are turned into other pieces of clothing or cushion covers. Okay let’s get serious.
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Digging In
One of the most problematic issues in life for people is trying to understand God, to make sense of how the experiencer of life relates to something bigger or possibly invisible.  It would sound offensive, even blasphemous to some people if I were to say “men create Gods”.  Is this statement true?  Maybe, maybe not, for this article it doesn’t need to be answered but the question can bring out a number of things that we could easily miss if we don’t explore it.
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We get caught in a maze of of black and whites, yos and nos, goods and bads, spiritual and material.  This divisiveness is where many problems arise.  We can become so righteous that it is obnoxious and elitist; if we call a young child bad when they are learning and feeling their way through the world we will be teaching them an odd set of values to carry through life, simple things become their enemy and they begin to live in fear of a big stick or an oppressive God.  When religious people start saying that sex is bad, we end up with a very twisted version of reality where intimacy seems unnatural.
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I remember a woman who used to hit her kid because he’d forget to make offerings to the deities, he became a very disturbed boy.  When we create or borrow a set of rules about ‘What God Wants’ we can easily create a prison for ourselves.  I think there is s healthier way to live and it is not bound by religious thought, it is simple, just ask where will this action lead? Does something help make us kinder, compassionate? Does it create turmoil? How do i feel after doing something? This type of approach doesn’t need a judgmental God waiting to swoop on our misdoings, a God with a big stick is a tyrant and is no friend of mine.   When we are overburdened with indoctrination or spiritual teachings we can lose our naturalness, intuitiveness and sense of self discrimination. Religious and spiritual groups can come from a linage of rules and guidelines or they may have a petty tyrant who everyone is scared of.  EVERY cult has enforcers of various types, there are the bullies and also the ones who float around as if they are an embodiment of virtue and consider themselves as the model that all others need to aspire to, their farts don’t stink.
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The Unknown Future
In leaving the cult or guru there is great freedom, it is a milestone in growing up.  By saying this I am not saying that all religious or spiritual practices ought to be avoided, I am saying that in moving on we claim back a part of ourselves, we no longer need the rule book; if there is something useful we can take it with us, if it works we can implement it.  If we look at Buddha, Jesus and some of the other sages we will notice in many cases they traveled through various schools of thoughts (when I reference Jesus here I mean his time with the Essenes and his journeys through Asia that are avoided by mainstream Christians) , they knew when it was time to leave.  Sometimes the sages got booted out of monasteries because their behavior and thinking no longer suited the sect they belonged to and they were considered a threat.  Here I am not encouraging disruptive behavior but I think it is more than acceptable to ask questions of cults when you go out the door.  The way a cult responds to questioning is a very good way to help decide just how bad the cult is, when there is a closing down and ostracizing of individuals you can rest assured that it is not only a dangerous place for oneself but also others.
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Into Foreverness
Going out the door of the world of limited thought is a glorious thing. The reason why people don’t is because they are scared, worried about offending God, losing the community, feeling like they will be ostracized, that it may be a mistake and they are betraying the Divine.
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There is a Super-Consciousness that has emerged out of the Deep Silence, it has self awareness, it does not judge, it is extremely forgiving of the journey that got us to now.

May no man enslave you
May you understand that the spark inside you is same as in the great Gods
May your true nature reveal itself
May your endless potential unfold
May no God be greater than you
May you claim back your power from the petty tyrants of limited thought
May wherever you go, there be a trail littered with love, compassion and empathy as you pass by
May you rest safely in Emptiness knowing that from it emerges everything

Tilopa 2.0

What the Fudge isn’t Enlightenment

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In the West we have been bombarded for more than a hundred years with information about various types of Utopian consciousness that will save us not only from the world around us, secure us a happy afterlife but also protect us from ourselves.  Some of those who arrived from the East to guide those seeking escape and the meaning of life have been very sincere and kind, others deluded and many with private agendas of proselytizing and spreading their brand and there have been those who have been corrupt, abusive and downright dangerous.  All these bods, whether they have been genuine in their quest to serve humanity, self centered or suffering from bizarre delusion, have added to the definition of the word ENLIGHTENMENT.  And from this word there has grown a mystique that this glorious fruit offered to humanity must be acquired at all costs.  Some would leave their families, others give up their life savings or even deprive themselves of basic nutrition and adhere to a diet suitable for a field rat or sparrow; then there have been those who felt it was appropriate to dress in the national costumes of other communities and use what could be described as a designer-language that only the initiated could make sense of, others are considered outsiders or ignorant. And there have been numerous ‘chosen ones’ who considered themselves privileged and saved beyond doubt because they hold to the true teachings.
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Normals
So let’s look at this Enlightenment thing.  I will start by mentioning a few things most people desire and say quality of life, happiness, a peaceful mind, good health and a kind heart are core things that may be part of ‘Enlightenment’ but they are also sought by many who do or don’t have a religious or spiritual quest, mankind sees them as normal and healthy.  These for some may be the fruits of this mysterious Enlightenment thing but when we look at them it would be fair to say that there have been numerous people who did not seek any God or paradise who would have achieved those goals and when I glance towards one of my favorite Indian good guys, the sage Ramana Maharshi, I am reminded that he died of cancer, so maybe this shortlist of desirables does not equate to Enlightenment or isn’t associated with it; they may or may not be spin-offs.
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Lighting Up
One common dictionary version of the word Enlightenment is “the action of enlightening or the state of being enlightened”, this doesn’t really say much it’s like saying there is a fishiness about fish; but we could surmise from its common usage that the word light or the concept ‘to throw light on’ would play a part. … Scene Change: Enter lots of people looking quite peaceful carrying candles and glowing.  This mind-picture has a lot of associated problems, all of us have met people who did dress-ups and looked all sparkly but turned out to be absolute shysters.  I like the idea of don’t believe what we see or hear, the senses can deceive us; in the same way that when people drink alcohol, their sense of judgement goes out, maybe we can consider that the senses can give us a false view.  So I will start by saying let’s forget what we are told.  My reasoning is based on the idea that we often hear interpreters of other peoples experiences telling us how something is, I consider this as absurd, commentators don’t necessarily know what the truth is, they assume and then create a logical story that is often very convincing.  Human nature is rather predictable, it’s like the lotteries, there are a few winners and everyone else talks about what they would do if they won. So what to do?
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Masquerade
For starters, we have heard secondhand that there is some type of elixir, something to be sought; the evidence seems to be based in scriptures and every now and then we hear of people who say they have made contact with supposed holy men or women who had that special Enlightenment thing.  And then we meet people who probably in all honesty believe that they are enlightened, whether it be true or false at this point doesn’t really matter.  I do think we need to sort the masquerade and exhibitions of devotion from what I would call depth of experience.  From my perspective depth of experience seems to be an important issue; and this translates as to see or feel deeper than what is presented or assumed to be so.
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The E Word
If there were such a thing as Enlightenment and won’t I buy in either way with a true or false argument, in an effort to make sense of it I think we would probably need to apply some basic attributes to this mysterious ‘E’ word, and yes I may be adding to the fiasco but we can be sensible about it; there also is the problem that in being sensible I am creating an assumption that the ‘E’ word must be sensible in some way, it is reasonable to say that it may not necessarily be so and an example that would challenge the ‘known sensible’ is the Zen Koan tradition.  A student is given a short text to contemplate that may seem nonsensical.  However, using analysis and critical thinking to get a number of issues sorted seems fair.  To be clear minded and create a foundation to work from is a good idea even if the end experience (or understanding it) disintegrates the foundation and common sense, we need to enter the subject in an orderly fashion.
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The Restful Mind
When we look at the numerous techniques found in Eastern, some of the Western religious traditions and in indigenous cultures we see there is a focus of what I call Taming the Bull, I will translate this as ‘to bring about a clarity of mind.’  I will use the word ‘mind’ in a particular parlance; the mind in this case means the container of thought and belongs to an associative thinker; imagine a balloon full of floating jellybeans of various sizes, each bean has attributes/stories about it, some micro and the others long sagas.  A calm mind-space may not be the definition of enlightenment but the desire or experience of such would allow ones perception to be clear without having chaotic thought in the way. What I am implying here is experience may need to be untainted by stories, is this necessary? I will commit myself here and say yes, that’s a given. The stories we have about things is what colors our view and can get in the way of ‘seeing’ properly.
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I will come back here and make it clear about what we are doing, we are looking at the word Enlightened, a word that has been dressed up and thrown around the spiritual circles, a word that has confused people, a word that has created a graveyard of casualties; we are trying to find a way to decide who may be the real deal and also if the E word exists.  Can we resolve the issue of enlightenment without others, can we either get rid of the idea, develop an approach to chase and secure the elixir or at minimum never be fooled again by wanna-be’s and shysters?
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The Illusionists
Often when some supposed spiritual expert or religious people discuss Enlightenment, they give us examples of Utopian worlds outside our vision, things that are not accessible by our senses; this type of attitude is  downright dangerous and has the potential for an abuse of power.  Whether it is Viking boats paddling to Valhalla, glowing faced Buddhas or Vedic Gods, if it is not something tangible it is good to keep them out of the mix for now or maybe forever.  One person creates a story and because it is not measurable it allows them the expert/master/guru to keep a student or disciple within their scope with a promise of a goal.  Is there something beyond our normal senses?  Yes obviously, contemporary physics tells us this, we don’t have to dig too far, does the miraculous happen?  Sure, we see it every day in numerous ways, many things defy logic and we make up stories to normalise them.  The issue is not that there isn’t something extraordinary beyond, it’s about trust, naivety, bullying of the ignorant and buying into the stories of others, not all but some of the experts would be deluded and self-righteous, others who make it up as they go and jiggle it around a bit to suit their agenda and there are those who are indoctrinated who believe in a specific tradition but have no personal experience. So what to do, do we burn the lot, give up?
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Getting Excited
We are also faced with another serious issue and it’s what I call spiritual euphoria, I have seen this many times.  An example is when I have been to events where due to overwhelming evidence I am confident that a ‘spiritual’ person/teacher is an absolute charlatan (or even criminal),  people in the gathering are having some type of temporary experience of some sort of bliss/ euphoria. When they leave the event they associate their experience with the guru or whoever; in a short period of time after a few visits they have acquired the beads, the book, the prayers, the candles and a ready made community who supports the belief that what is going on is deeply spiritual and the guru gets the enlightenment seal of approval by a naive to some degree semi-hypnotised community.  Contrary to popular opinion, there is a possibility that Enlightenment would probably not only be about feeling good 24/7 but it is fair to say that if there was such a thing as Enlightenment, feeling good may be an attribute….let’s continue.  The desire for or idea of 24/7 feeling blissful could easily be an obstacle or at least amisunderstanding.
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Spiritual Spam
These days we are bombarded with what resembles wise sayings.  I like the word discrimination, when discrimination is used as a tool of analysis and not to marginalise people or communities, it is one of the best things in our toolbox.  It is easy for people to read some words and get a temporary feeling of warm-fuzzy and get the wisdom salivary glands going, from my experience I think it is important to carefully pull apart these words of wisdom, to give them life.  Often when we read words we make assumptions based on our own history and conditioning. Sometimes the creators of the supposedly wise words have committed heinous crimes against women and children, I don’t subscribe to the idea ‘they had a temporary lapse of virtue and didn’t live the teachings’, this may be true but I am not comfortable with delusory flowery sayings that create temporary euphoria and brain sparkles, it’s a bit like fake plants, they may look okay but have no substance and just take up space.
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The Magicless Pill
And there are many people who have taken drugs and assume because the experience they have is outside the normal-known that they have opened up consciousness, I am quite comfortable to say that after forty years of meditation and explorations of consciousness, the drug experience has little to do with super-consciousness, if there were a benefit from them and I do say this with great hesitation and extreme caution, it would be a reminder that our normal way of seeing is not the only worldview but there are other ways of perception.  As the world’s mental health institutions are littered with casualties from drug experimentation, this idea is fraught with danger.  Of the great men and women I have met in my life, I haven’t met anybody who resembled a Buddha or someone similar who would encourage external substances to help awaken something inside, i have met wonderful people who are drug users and it would be unreasonable to say that drug users are not necessarily kind people, we are talking about consciousness not about integrity or character; there is now a culture of people hanging out with bods they refer as Shamans and potion-ing up;  most that I have met are a little unstable and I am yet to meet someone who has evidence of an ongoing type of spiritual experience that doesn’t seem like a type of psychosis, I have met a number who are semi-euphoric people.  We were talking about Enlightenment.
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What Would Buddha Do?
So what is it?  We do know according to legend/history that Buddha experienced something.  At the core of his teaching is detachment, when we look at the reasoning behind this it seems clear it is because if someone is clinging to things, it will ultimately lead to suffering at its loss.  Gautama Buddha also aligns with Jesus Christ, without sounding like a sermon  which this is not, I am cross referencing something from another tradition; Jesus supposedly said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal”, both of these great men have had religions and cults built around their lives and teachings, both imply that what may be worthwhile pursuing is not in things and also point out that if you hang on too tight to things you may be heading for trouble.  So is this Enlightenment? In both cases we are given a method of how to relate to things, to keep them in their place but this would not be the goal would it?  If we look at it closely we are given a hint of something worth pursuing, we see a picture that the relationship between ourselves and ‘things’ are critical, it is implied that there needs to be a letting go, a non clinging to things.  If we are not cautious and are a zealot or extremist we could easily begin to despise the world around us, to treat it as the enemy and this is a tragedy to say the least.  Many people spend their lives running away, are scared of life, frightened of natural emotions; when you take an idea too far it can become poison.
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Who’s the Boss?
If we look closely at detachment there is an implication that being obsessive about something makes us a slave to it.  So is Enlightenment about being a master instead of a slave?  The word Master (with a big m) comes up a lot among guru-speak, it’s a little challenging to someone from the West when they hear an adult calling someone in an Indian pajamas “Master”. Going back to the Jesus way of doing things I am reminded that the apostle Peter called Jesus Master and he said “I am not your master”, I would consider this to be a good yardstick to work from, assuming that Jesus was real, looking at his behavior it is clear he had a decent set of values and if any one was to be someones master, he would be in the running to get the top job.  In some traditions such as the Radha Soami and Ruhani Satsang groups in Northern India they imply that the Master is inside, it is light and sound, they also refer to someone alive as representing the Living Master, I won’t address this approach as either true or false, it is just one of many references I could have used. But there is an implication of ‘handing over’ to another, but some say, “no go”.
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Looking Elsewhere
In some traditions like the one just mentioned we hear that the guru or God is inside, beyond any doubt these words have created many problems, there’s a lot of baggage associated with this approach. And the idea also presents some marvelous questions for the inquisitive seeker of life’s mysteries.  We have also heard people say ‘I am God’, some of these are people who would be described as having mental health issues and we have heard some great noble men and women also refer to themselves as God, and we can also read in some biblical translations that Jesus said something like, “Know that ye are Gods”.  Are these great personage Divine madmen?  I would apply a little commonsense here, the word God is a variable and means something  totally different to many people. When we hear people saying that God or guru is inside, this creates a series of complications, however it does if we follow this line of thought remove the idea of running down the street and looking for a savior or some dude in an Eastern outfit.  Some say the word guru means teacher, others say remover of darkness and there are those who will look starry eyed and start babbling a stream of indecipherable words that almost seem insane as they expound their love for who they are devoted to.
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The idea of looking INSIDE may not be the solution but it is not a bad idea, if Buddha puts out a warning to not get attached to ‘things’ of the world, it would seem practical to look the other way, his attachment could also include people as they are in the world of form.  And as a back up confirmation we hear that Jesus said, “the kingdom of Heaven comes not by observation, the kingdom of Heaven is in you”.
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Opening the Box and Looking In
When we look inside, what do we see?  Fears, joys, wandering thoughts, dreams of the future, memories, and sensations such as aches, tingles, anxiety, fleeting passing images, textures.  Are these the things that we are seeking, is this what they are talking about?  Some would say,”obviously not” and consider it to be a stupid question.  I personally am never in a hurry to dismiss and arrive at assumptions about things said by those I consider as wise.  It would seem reasonable to say that these things are not what we are looking for, however they may be a useful part of the tools required to get the result which is sought to understand this Enlightenment thing people speak of.  There is a form of meditation that some people do, it’s called Neti Neti, a simple translation would be “not this, not this”.  As anything presents itself in our thought field in meditation it gets the gentle tap of the conscious-ping-pong-bat, Neti Neti not this not this. When we look towards the sage Ramana Maharshi we will see he told those who inquired about God and the mystery of life that they need to meditate and ask the question ‘who am i’, he said that meditation without self-inquiry is not so good, and also implied that self-inquiry without meditation is fraught with danger.  Both Buddha and Ramana’s methods seem to be pointing to get under the bonnet of our thinking.
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I Think I Thought
Thought can be troublesome, it breaks people, prevents them sleeping, leads to despair unless they can find a way to step away from it.  Trying to catch or stop thought in its tracks is like stretching out your fingers, putting them into a river and attempting to get reasonable handfuls of water, most of it slips through the fingers, it’s a futile quest.  If we think about it, the meditative process is in a way defined by Buddha when he reminded us that attachment is an issue, we can take that idea and apply it to our internal processes and not just what is going on outside.  When we try and stop thought we are attaching to it; thought has its own business, we assume that because its in our mind-space that it must be ours. Personally I am not fooled by this, I see thought the same as looking out the window.  If a van drives past it is obviously not my van; if thought is passing i see it as not my thought; however if I attach to it then the relationship deepens, if I follow it an action may follow, I do not need to follow it, it’s not my thought, it is only as solid as a cloud and I know clouds change shape, they move on and disintegrate. Thoughts also emerge from my inbuilt tendencies, there is an Indian word called samskaras that some people would be aware of, I am not an Indian so I will speak English instead because it’s easier to understand without adding a whole lot of spiritual jargon to the mix.  Our tendencies will relate to the world around us, we see an image, it is delightful, we want to posses it or have some type of experience with it, the hooks go in, we are attached.  From day dot, the first moment of our lives we have been creating a story on how the world is, developing beliefs that we think are truth, it may be political, social, religious or just natural preferences. Out of the stories created, thoughts stream from our subconscious; we believe we are something, someone, we have a vision of how the world is, we usually don’t doubt the stories, they are hardwired and make up our world.
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Walking Through Space
When we plunge deeper, the world dissolves, there is no ‘ground’, there is no substance; we may choose to call our awareness ‘the perceiver’ and think that it has real substance but when start digging around it becomes clear there really is nothing to grab onto, it’s the same situation as trying to look out our own eyes. It may be simpler just to say, “ok there is conscious—ness, something is aware of the movement of forms of shape-sounds in space” but I am confident there is no need to get carried away with a definition.  The mind of man likes a sense of order, to categorise things, some forms of Zen are about undoing sense, I don’t mean to become nonsensical, I am saying that logic is the wrong tool, it’s like trying to catch a rainbow in a bottle, trying to answer or do the impossible.  The sage Jiddu Krishnamurthi used to say, “can we ever ask the right question?”, he was one of the great explorers of spirituality and religion, I would not be in a hurry to disregard this simple question.
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Checking In
We are looking at what this Enlightenment thing might be and all the associated spiritual games played by many, all those experts, the seekers, the gurus, the religious addictions people have and the fanciful dreams of what it’s about. We have heard many times ‘look within’, those words have been said in great seriousness and also flippantly they are thrown around by many spiritual types of people. A question arises, so what about the outside, is it meaningless?  When we look with our eyes we see a world in motion, nothing is static, when we listen, sound is also in motion, it has a starting point and a decay, it is time-bound. When we taste, the cake is there and then it’s gone it barely touched the sides and internally in our thinking thoughts come and go at lightening speed, the one thing that is consistent is movement. And a reminder that we know from experience that stillness or emptiness is constant. Here we have the situation of EVERYTHING is in motion and there is an underlying stillness, we can almost conclude that attachment to anything that moves may not be practical because it is time-based, it has a shelf life, or we could view it from another perspective that it is permanent at each moment and may never be repeated, whichever way we choose to see it it does seem reasonable to say that anything that is time-based is probably not what we are pursuing. Understanding that attachable things, even the forms of Gods are things that at some point need to be disconnected from.
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The more we look we find ourselves in the situation that the very point of awareness, what we call the experiencer of the vision is the critical element in the picture.  And this is no new revelation but it is critical that we get rid of a lot of other assumptions, if we don’t they will get in the way and shape our understanding.  We are faced with a dilemma and it is the very one that has been used by the charlatans to delude others and in many cases themselves, there is something slightly out of the ordinary doing something, however when we look towards the real Zen teachers we can see that ordinariness may be critical part of the process, and it is not that I am saying that ordinariness is the essence of Enlightenment, but if we look closely we will notice that things are only made ordinary by ‘thought’, when something is familiar it is shrunk down into the ‘known’ and is considered ordinary, when really what is going on is miraculous. The real Zen teachers and I am saying the word ‘real’ intentionally to separate them away from religious tradition with all its baggage, there are those outside of and also a few in the traditions who looked through a bigger window at the world, and I am not trying to be disrespectful to traditions.  If I don’t clarify things an assumption may arise that I am saying that Zen is a path to enlightenment, it may be but discrimination is important.  Although the Zen tradition is diverse and the Koan tradition may seem chaotic as well as nonsensical it clearly shows that the tool we are using ‘the thinking logical mind’ may not be suitable for the job to be completed and without getting over cerebral about it all, finding the extraordinary in nature around us seems to be closer to what one is seeking than philosophical discussions or treatises on what God, the meaning of life or Enlightenment might be.
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I am comfortable saying :

  • Thought is an obstacle
  • Philosophy can be seriously flawed because it sends people down a track where they create a story that is interpreted a certain way and is not about personal experience
  • The perceiver of the experience is critical
  • The perceiver is not the same as the thoughts about what a person believes him or herself to be, people create a story based on temporary attributes
  • There is a witness but I say the W word with great caution because of assumptions people make
  • Gods and gurus may get in the way
  • External things are transitory and attachment to them has a use-by date
  • The logical mind is totally out of its depth but may be a useful tool to help eliminate what Enlightenment isnt
  • Confusing a type of euphoria with Enlightenment is common but erroneous
  • One’s personal experience is the yardstick for measuring
  • Thought divides things into categories where the familiar is not extraordinary whereas the new or unknown is

So where does this leave us?
When we look at the list above and apply the Neti Neti – Not This Not This approach, by elimination and that also means getting rid of our sh*t, we will find a type of space in our thinking.  If we enter into a quest with ideas of what something might be, everything will be colored by what we bring to it.  Suddenly I may sound like a Buddhist if I use the word Emptiness, as we know in Buddhism Emptiness is often mentioned.  Not being a Buddhist it is easier for me to break it out of the box, the conclusions or perspective may be the same as some who discuss Buddhism but any ism will have its assumptions and we don’t need them to color our thoughts even if the ism holds some truth.
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Everything’s in Motion
We can conclude without a fuss that everything in the world is transitory,  we know that things are moving in, on or are in relation to space, they arise, stay a while and fall away into foreverness. It’s the relationship with the empty-still-backdrop that allows all things to come into form or have motion.  The more we look clearly and analyse we will begin to see that WE are in the way of the view, the ME that I think I am is blocking the view of not only how I see the world, experience and see things but it also is THE thing that prevents me from seeing who or what I am.  ME is at the centre of the totality of all the experiences I have had and based on the data I throw together, a picture emerges that I use to define me.  We could simplify it down and say ‘well I am the witness’, with that approach great caution is required and here’s why.
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There is an assumption that we are at the centre, we are inside looking out at the world, people rarely question this.  We see life on a timeline going from birth to death , A to Z with life stuff in the middle.  Some people have a belief in reincarnation, this  ME we could define as other A’s to Z’s;  whether reincarnation is true or not doesn’t matter here, if somebody has an experience of their other lives then they could come to a reasonable conclusion about the existence of reincarnation, until then it’s just a concept, religious flippy floppy info that we have been indoctrinated with.  Our brain is a very sensitive machine, it translates data and sends it via pathways throughout the body.  We know that we don’t all see the same thing, we as a human community agree on certain aspects, a tree is a tree, there is an unspoken acknowledgement and orderliness, as well as rules and limitations that the community members say are possible, when someone says anything that doesn’t fit they, are defined as odd, a nutter or occasionally a Saint or miracle worker.  Let’s look at all this very closely.
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A View Through the Lens
The world we move in has a giant filter over it, the filter is in the individual, everything is being translated through filters that shape each persons view,  I am hesitant to say ‘live in the Now’, it has so much baggage and when most people are in the NOW, the filters are blocking the present experience.  But there is a great benefit to constantly come back into the present by throwing a rope around the wayward wandering mind who is self obsessed with a story of who it believes itself to be.
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I wouldn’t be foolish enough to say that there is or isn’t Enlightenment. However, it is critical to undo all the stories, myths and second hand versions of what it is; without removing the concepts of what it may be, the concepts will create a false goal and a person becomes a slave to an idea that is not based in the individuals experience.  If we need to DO anything, and I will say I prefer to NOT DO anything, it would be to come back to oneself, and the deeper we go we find that there is NOTHING, and in NOTHING is the potential of EVERYTHING.
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Tilopa 2.0