WHEN YOU COME TO A PLACE, WHAT PLACE DO YOU COME TO?

NAME OF PROJECT: WHEN YOU COME TO A PLACE, WHAT PLACE DO YOU COME TO?

NEW PROJECT: EGO, EGO, GOD OF THE JUNGLE

FOR HUMANITY, MEMORY HAS COME TO REPLACE UNDERSTANDING

Memory cannot, of itself, lead to Understanding. It can only shape Points of View which are endlessly subject to change.

Understanding based on Memory, it follows, is also endlessly subject to change. It will also have to compete with other competing "understandings".

Real Understanding only comes into existence with Direct Seeing in the present moment. As soon as it enters Memory, it also is already subject to revision because it has become detached from Seeing...

Test this out on yourself and others, vegans and carnivores alike, with sentences such as, 

"What is on your plate?"

What you remember is filtered by your window frame. The man at the upstairs window will see something different. The man at the back bedroom window will doubt your sanity.

NOTES

The circle represents the confines of a system in which duality operates. In our case, this is the field of Humanity.

A & B represent any and all conflicting opposites. The list is endless.

AB passes through the centre of the circle at R. It indicates the maximum polarity possible for AB within the circle. This provides the maximum distance between the contestants A and B.  The arrows on AB and AC indicate the direction of flow. The arrows on CR, one below C pointing towards R and one above R pointing towards C also indicate the direction of flow.

On AR, to the right of A, there are two arrow points facing each other thus: > <.  On RB, to the right of R, there are similar arrows. These arrows represent the confrontation points which are continuously appearing anywhere and everywhere throughout the plane of conflict which is the line AB. These confrontations are interminable.

If A were ever to succeed in defeating and occupying B, B would immediately reappear in another guise at A and the confrontation would resume. History illustrates this very clearly.

C represents the upstream point at which humans are reconciled by abandoning A and B. It is both an exit and an entry point.

The dotted line through C and parallel to AB represents the plane of reality occupied by Humans who are, just that, Humans. They have abandoned the identifications which create the AB conflicts or have never descended into that lower world in the first place.

R represents the linear point, within the horizontal field of conflict, where, by abandoning A and B, reconciliation is also achievable. This is unlikely, however, because of the momentum accumulated by the Pendulum of Conflict in its ongoing advances and retreats.  This momentum reinforces the differentiations of A and B.

C = R.

The diagram is static. In reality everything is dynamic; every atom, every cell, every solar system.

For the sake of simplicity, the diagram is two dimensional and shows one AB line. Actually, there are an unlimited number of AB lines spreading out in all directions from R to the circumference, just as there are an unlimited number of issues on which humans are divided and are in unrelenting conflict with each other.

Each and every one of these issues on which humans are in conflict with each other has the same Reconciliation Point; the complete surrender of identification with the points A and B. This is replaced by direct seeing the way things actually are in the present moment.

Reconciliation is rediscovery in the living present of sameness – our real and eternal Identity. This replaces identification with “differentness” which occurs when understanding is based on memory of the past and the points of view it conditions. These points of view include corresponding projections into an imagined future.

Furthermore, the two dimensional diagram represents a three dimensional sphere, the sphere of human existence, within which an infinite number of AB lines radiate outwards from a single immaterial point.  On the material plane, this includes the planet on which our dramas are played out.

Because of the enormous powers of destruction which human beings have obtained, our continuing failure to solve our ongoing and worsening AB conflicts now endangers the Earth itself.

The apparent vacuum within the circle itself is actually full of events, incidents, hostilities, revenge, justifications, memories, points of view, understandings and misunderstandings. All are movements of the conditioned mind.

Full and expanding.

It is a rich compost in which A and B continually seek and find the food to support and nourish their differences rather than resolve their conflicts. It is like a thistle growing next to a lettuce. Each takes from the same soil what its roots need to keep thistles quite different from lettuces.

PRINT NOTES & DIAGRAM HERE

Edited 27.6.16

SUFFERING

RIGHT VIEW

In the Jungle of the World

and the Tangle of the Senses

we build us huts of mud and heartache

and make (and mend) our fragile fences.

‘This is me! That is mine!’

is the burden of our song.

We cannot see, still less define

that pain and sorrow prove us wrong.

This is not mine, this is not me,

is the beginning of our sanity.

Letting go of what does not concern us

leaves that alone which, meddled with, will burn us.

The Law is mirror-like in its precision

and its simplicity needs no revision;

that Good breeds Good

and Evil has its price;

that Virtue is its own reward.

And so is Vice.

That all things pass away,

from butterflies to stars,

and though the World’s a prison
   it’s the Mind that makes the bars.

AS YOU SOW, SO ARE YOU REAPED

        
            DO AS YOU WOULD BE DONE 

                Ethics is the highest science, 
                  concerning itself with survival, 

                  not merely knowall.

                  A man without Ethics,
                  ever thinking
                  never seeing,
                  is already drowning;
                  ever sinking
                  ever lower
                  in his diminishing
                  sea of being.

                 

             New Project: SUFFERING

THE LESS I NAME THE MORE I SEE

Waves crash into each other.

Sharing their salinity, oxygenation, clouded sand

and silver flashing fish.

How can we demarcate them?

             

                                     USAIN BOLT

                                    Usain Bolt ran exactly 100 metres.

                                    To be there before the others.

                                    Josef Klein ran exactly 100 metres.

                                    To catch the bus.

                                    Usain Bolt won

                                    and is engulfed by cameramen

                                    in Beijing.

                                    Josef Klein missed the bus

                                    and is slumped on a bench by a bus stop

                                    in Clapham.

                                    Usain is recognised by everyone world-wide

                                    and lives in luxury everywhere.

                                    Josef is unrecognised by neighbours

                                    in a block of Council Flats in Clapham.

                                    Usain Bolt is an entertainer.

                                    Josef Klein is a retired refuse collector.

                                    Exactly 100 metres is exactly 100 metres.

                                                                           Papa Francis says

                                        He

                                        and

                                        his cohorts of priests

                                        can forgive abortion.

                                        Abortion is a label for killing.

                                        Papa is wrong.

                                        The only killer Papa can forgive

                                        is the man who assassinates

                                        Papa himself.

                                        This is true

                                        for all his cohorts of priests.

                                        Only God can forgive all killing.

                                        If He chooses to.

                                        Es audiendo, Papa?

                                                                       -GNOME 

                                    


NEW PROJECT:  AS WE SOW, SO ARE WE REAPED 

NO UNWANTED WHEELBARROWS

We humans are collectors ever.

Grasping after outward things to give us more power or sense of Self in a world of Others.

We collect our “things” in albums, bookcases, wallets, houses, bank vaults, jewellery boxes, gardens, kennels, stables, wardrobes, Sainsbury shopping trolleys.

They give us our sense of being “someone”.

We use them to convince others that we are “someone”.

They also give us our fear of “not being enough”.

Grasping after inward things to give us a sense of identity, individuality, personality.

We collect our inward things in our minds.  We collect thoughts, memories opinions, emotions, regrets, grievances, plans, hopes.

Asked for a couple of carrots from the garden, we bring our wheelbarrow, full of our garden produce (in which there may even be a carrot or two). Asked for the time of day, we will bring a minute by minute account of our yesterdays and tomorrows.

The wheelbarrow is our egoic self. The overflowing contents are the contents of our mind, to which we cling with all the pride and fear of a child in the middle of the elaborate sandcastle, which it has spent all day creating and defending against the other children. As the shadows lengthen, it casts increasingly apprehensive glances at the incoming tide (as well as the other children).

FORGIVE a pronoun’s entry

along a spine,

a suddenly separate spider sentry

wanting to define

his continent of cells,

wanting another

a more than mother brother.

Like whispering shells

sharing a spark

the sun let fall into their dark.

          NEW PROJECT:
Examination of the phenomenon called ‘Ceiling Out’.

UPSTREAMING

ELUCIDATION OF THE PROJECT – UPSTREAMING

The diagram of the triangle is a conceptual image. It is a tool for understanding UPSTREAMING and how it works and also how to put it into practice. In everyday life. Here and now.

The Apex is the point from which an impulse of energy flows out from its source. In flowing out, as at a fork in the road, it creates a duality, a pair of opposites. These manifest at each end of the base line of the triangle. They represent conflicting points of view and experience. Jews and Arabs, You and Me, Past and Future, Good and Evil, My Religion and Your Religion, Happiness and Unhappiness, Pleasure and Pain, Desire and Aversion, Birth and Death, and so on.

The space between them (the base line) represents the area in which the conflict is played out.

There are innumerable possible triangles but they all have the same Apex – the point upstream of their diverging dualities. From this departure point, they flow out (centrifugally) in pairs, along with the diverging mirror images of their opposites. To it they return (centripetally) in search of the end of conflict, for reconciliation and peace.  This happens when all efforts to solve the problem on the base line, on its own dualistic terms, have failed.

If you could lay all possible triangles next to each other with their sides touching, they would form a circle like a wheel. All the sides flow out from the same Apex, the Centre. The sides of the triangle appear like the spokes of a wheel. The base lines join together to make the circumference of the circle, the rim of the wheel.

This circumference is made up of an infinite number of individual dots. Each dot represents the point where the outward flowing impulse from the Centre materialises as form in opposition to its opposing form. These forms can be physical (bodies) – cats and dogs, hunters and hunted, me and you, or mental (ideas, thoughts) – rich and poor, deists and atheists, masters and servants, mine and yours.

These forms react to their opposites and exist in conflict with them until reconciliation is found. This puts an end to their imagined separateness by locating the apex or its counterpart at the median point of the baseline. For example:

religious or political activists abandon the beliefs which separate them in favour of an awareness of their shared humanity which re-connects them in unity;

the rich abandon 'too much' and relieve the poor of 'not enough' on the basis their shared status as fellow living beings of the One Family.

The outward impulse is outward looking and leads to identification with thoughts, feelings and sense objects. This results in the illusion of a separation into ‘self’ and ‘other(s)’. This flowing out is centrifugal. It creates the base line of dualistic activity in the world. 

Looking inwards and withdrawing upwards from the base line activity (experienced as suffering) to the Apex, the Centre (experienced as consciousness) is centripetal. The centre of a wheel is still. Likewise the Apex, the Centre, is still. It is empty like space.

The diagram is static. But it can be conceived as a moving wheel. The wheel of life. This is used in Eastern cosmologies to represent the Sangsara, the wandering on through the world of form, the world of birth and death. What keeps it in motion is Desire – the motivating force behind the outward impulse away from the Centre.

When one has had enough of ‘activity’, enough of ‘suffering’ on the wheel of life, there is an impulse to return, to seek peace, to upstream to the original state of Undifferentiated Oneness – consciousness without attachment to form and identification with form.

All problems are resolved when they disappear in the Centre. Here is the end of all wanting.

When this cycle is perceived, when the perception sinks into the mind and uncovers what lies beyond the mind, it becomes understanding – a shift in consciousness.

Seeing from the point of view of where each spoke is riveted to the rim of the wheel, a view of an infinite number of dots (separate forms), attracted and repelled by each other, competing and conflicting, comes to an end.

Consciousness shifts. Seeing is now from the point of view of the Centre, from which every thing is seen to be part of the Whole.


* UPSTREAMING DIAGRAM with Elucidation  Print version here

NEW PROJECT: NO UNWANTED WHEELBARROWS

 

You ask the gardener for carrots.

He comes back from the garden with a full wheelbarrow. In it are a variety of vegetables, some soil, small stones, a few snails etc. Possibly carrots too. All mixed together.

 

Alternative Scenario 1:

You ask the gardener for carrots.

He comes back with a few carrots and puts them in your hand.

 

Alternative Scenario 2:

You ask the gardener for carrots.

He comes back and says, “There aren’t any carrots.”

 

Is there a name stamped on the wheelbarrow?

 

EMPTY-HANDED I GO AND LO! THE SPADE IS IN MY HANDS

COMMENT

“Riding backwards on an Ox, one enters the Buddha Hall”. The Ox is the Mind. The Buddha Hall is the Centre.

“All roads lead to Rome” (unless you are going in the opposite direction...)

NEW PROJECT: UPSTREAMING

If you can’t solve a problem on its own level,

• How do you spell “negativity”? Look in a dictionary.

try Upstreaming it!

• How do I put an end to my negativity? Upstream it to the fork in the road where you (repeatedly) choose to be negative. Then choose the other route.

Read Chapter 22 UPSTREAMING from CENTRE by Brian Taylor. 

Print version here