Big news in science this week. Something or other about gravitational waves–the original ones–like in the big bang theory. Yeah, another theory, like evolution (meaning all stupid/ignorant idiots can stop reading and go back to fantasy island). Not that I judge of course. *smirky face inserted ——>
This stuff goes back a few decades to some guy or other who predicted this wave would be there, as a way of explaining what seemed to be the rapid inflation of the universe from a singularity into the vast expanse we find today, mostly of empty space and dark matter. Also it explained the general uniformity of matter concentration, throughout. Got all that? Doesn’t matter.
Just know it’s big. About as big as the Higgs Boson find a while back. Maybe bigger. Like in Einsteinian big. As in a whole lotta folks near peed themselves.
You and I? Ah, not so much. Didn’t affect the price of gas nor reduce my angst about non-duality achievement any. What else matters?
Speaking of which, non-duality that is. I’m not any closer. Nor any farther. Since it’s not a place to go to, it’s just opening your eyes and seeing R E A L I T Y. Dontcha wish Aretha had sung about that instead of a very dualistic concept like respect?
Anyway, I been hanging around with such concepts for a while now. Some of it is making some sense. But I don’t feel enlightened in any way. I mean, one of the things that some and I mean S O M E people say is that to the enlightened or awakened mind, “everything is exactly the way it should be.”
Which is way way uncool and kinda sick given the cesspool of poo the world is in. But ya see, there is a logic to it. Saying that the world is a shit hole is a value judgment quite clearly. Various despots, political and economic, probably would disagree because they have island homes and barely raised a buffed finger before someone is at hand to step and fetch for them. They are powerful and they like it. The world is their oyster.
But there’s a whole ‘nother level where everything is exactly as it should be. In fact, it’s exactly as it has to be. I can no other than it is. And that’s very non-dual when you think of it. See, reality is nothing but the sum total of all actions by everyone, and all actions by everything, as far as the eye can see as they say, like in to the edge of the universe. Given what you are doing, thinking, feeling, and multiplied by all the rest of it, including the blade of grass that is struggling to grow, and either is or isn’t, a one-time-only unique reality is formed. And it is what it is, and is exactly what it must be.
Let me know when your eyeballs quit spinnin’ and I’ll go on.
The reality of all this, is neither good nor bad, nor right or wrong, or any other dualism. It just is.
Human egos (that’s us) attach ourselves to certain desires of what that reality should/could be, and then the fun begins. We try to change it, all the while other people are doing the same, but maybe not at all in the way we want. And some people just say to hell with it, and create their own little fantasy reality. Those are the really interesting one’s when you think about it. Talk about your Sim city! It’s like a game box filled with deities, and laws, and morals, all designed just by YOU for YOU. It’s amazing how far some people will take this. Just ask Ken Ham how far you can parade a fantasy world and get people to pay you for it.
So the trick, as I see it, is the not give a damn, because it won’t change anything anyway, but somehow be a good person and do “good” in the world, all the while not being attached to any outcome that is most assuredly not going to go your way anyway–since who the hell are you to dictate the world?
Can you see where I am stuck?
It’s not all no God, if you think that I’m headed that way. I’m not. I think the same “truth” derives from either a god-model or a spontaneous out of now where for no reason explanation. One may take a bit longer to arrive at, but in the end, both lead to the same thing. Reality is still gonna be reality, unless you get off the train and decide to hitch your donkey to a literal star over Bethlehem. Then you just dig the ditch a little deeper, or sink deeper into Plato’s cave.
All roads lead to. . . .
What?
They lead to realizing that a mind is just conveniently for aesthetic? purposes, housed in a bony case called a head. And the rest of “us” is conveniently covered over with bones and tissue and skin and offered as an “entity”. The mind is not mine, or yours, it’s ours. It’s as big as the universe at least, and perhaps bigger. I haven’t walked around the block very far yet. Yet that’s where it has to lead. Unbounded mind, all mixed in a soup of unbounded minds all being one big mind. Trying to be “me” is fairly selfish and silly at the same time.
Yet I go on being me. Reading Jed McKenna doesn’t enlighten me, nor do I agree with a lot he says, and I find some of his explanations of why he acts so darn ego-driven when he’s not, unsatisfying and vaguely con-artist in the attempt. I surely don’t buy into the idea that everyone who has ever become enlightened has to pass through this “first step” which wrenches the guts and destroys everything. Is it essential to leave spouses and children and go off barefoot in a quest? He claims a fair percentage end up in loony bins at least for a while.
I don’t buy that. Course, he would say that anyone who doesn’t agree with him, hasn’t become enlightened and probably doesn’t want to suffer the slings and arrows as it were. But since Mr. McKenna remains an enigma of sorts and unreachable pretty much, I’m not sure he’s any more real than the Wizard of Oz. All show and glitter, but look behind the curtain.
I don’t know that any of it matters. But clearly it seems to matter to a whole lot of humans because we spend billions of bucks on thousands of teachers and gurus and books and CD’s and speeches, all to help us along the road to what was that again? Some place not here.
And it’s not that we are all so god-awful unhappy being here. I know I’m not. Life right here and now is damn good in my book. I got no serious complaints. I’m pretty sure that a whole lot of seekers would agree.
Yet something keeps being that itch we can’t quite scratch.
I’ll let you know if I ever get there.
When I’m not too busy doing whatever it is you do when you are enlightened.
I hope pizza is still on the menu.
Existential Ennui 