We claim, with confidence, this life I live is MY life. As we say “this is my car” or “this is my couch” or “this is my computer”, and “this is my body”, or looking in a mirror, we say “this is my face” … in summary we claim, usually without ever questioning the claim, this is my life. Mine, no one else’s. And since I own this life, this body, this mind, I must control my life so bad things do not happen, I must gain ever more power to wrest control away from others, to be the top dog, to make sure no bad things happen to me and only good things happen. Because, after all, this IS MY life. It is MINE. I alone am master of my fate, the controller of my destiny.
What if that claim is NOT TRUE? The invitation is to QUESTION the claims of the mind, to challenge the construct of assumptions we believe to be true even though more often than not, the evidence in Life DISPROVES our claims . . .
When this claim is in place, it is very much like being hypnotized into believing you are a dog. Than you behave like a dog, panting, wagging your behind, barking at other dogs ie people you also see as dogs, and so on. All of that could be said to be, “Being a dog”. Who I am is a dog. No question about that!
And that goes on until the hypnotist snaps her fingers and removes the trance.
For us the hypnosis is, “Being in charge”. The human hypnosis, which arises in virtually every human mind-body organism (ie machine) around the age of two and a half, is “I am the architect of MY life and “I” must therefore strive and struggle to get it right, to exert my will, ie to exert my control over events.
So we go through life with this “operating principle” called I am in charge here. And they way things work around here is we do things MY way or not at all. Some call this ego. Others call it the “thinking mind”. Wayne Liquorman calls it “The false sense of authorship”. Ramesh Balsekar called it “Divine Hypnosis” (one of my favorite pointers as the implication is, there is nothing intrinsically “wrong” with this hypnosis; it, like everything else that exists, is DIVINE.
I call it forgetting. An active forgetting rather than a passive forgetting, as it IS ongoing. We are all going around barking like dogs, rarely stopping for a moment to inquire into this, to ask, is this TRUE? AM I a dog REALLY? Or is something else functioning, driving me to believe I am a dog? And what might that something be?
When we are imbued with this “Divine Hypnosis” we never question the assumed fact that I am and life is mine to handle as best I can. So we make life into a struggle, and strive for a better future and hope we do not repeat the bad choices that ruined things before (just when it was all going SO great and my true love was finally in my life, something happened, I made some choice that she hated, and so she left me).
The question is, ARE you in charge? Are you responsible for breathing? For making your heart beat? Question the assumption, rather than continuing to bark like a dog trying to keep the mailman from entering your yard to deliver bad news. And biting the mailman when he brings bills instead of a big unexpected check. To mix a few metaphors!
Ask your self: “Do I make my heart beat? Do I make my mind think? Do I actually control life? Is this MY life? Or is it possible that a much larger actually vast influence is doing all that? What is the essence of What Is? Is What Is something I as a machine, a bodymind organism, CREATED? (Or “co-created?”) OR, am I simply hypnotized into believing I am in control (like believing I am a dog)?
Look straight at What Is. Who or what is really “in charge here?” Perhaps (with a bit of good luck) you will begin to see, the entire Universe is a play of something “I don’t knw”. What might THAT which “I don’t know BE?
Heart is being beaten. By what? Mind is actively thinking? By whom? Bre4athing is happening whether noticed or not. What is the Source of the breathing? Are YOU really “doing” the breathing? Or is it happening and only after it is already happening do we claim it as something we own and mange, saying “I am breathing?”
Take a good look at the assumption of “me” and “mine”, of having some “power to control events” (and usually wanting MORE power to control events) the assumption “This is MY life”. See if the hypnotic idea of a “me in charge” is really REAL. Or ON:Y an idea that is an inevitable product of the “Divine Hypnosis”.
You may discover that the bodymind machine you call “me” is but an INSTRUMENT though which Totality functions and that the idea of me is ONLY an idea with no actual substance and no real power to alter or modify What Is. This may bring about a Seeing that What IS, IS . . . and a lessening or disappearance of the striving for power and control (which is really force, trying to bend the universe to YOUR will). Gaining a position of great power is a really attractive idea to the hypnotized subject, who is convinced, “If I could just become President, then I could change the world and get MY way to be THE way the Universe unfolds”. Ask Mr. Obama how that one is going for him!
So while I remind you to not believe anything I say, because nothing ANYONE says is “the truth”, I invite you to take a far deeper look into What IS, like what is happening in this life here, now, in this body, in this environment I call mine, and see what is the controlling power that breathes that body, that lives through that instrument. Begin to be aware or the Energy moving through that organism, living it, moving it in various ways, making it eat, sleep, making its heart beat, making it think (and making it think that YOU think!) and so on. Notice the Universal Life Energy moving and changing instant by instant. What IS, IS, and It IS happening right now. Who is doing the happening?
When it is seen, the doing is happening and is not MY doing, you might call that Enlightenment. But it will not be YOUR enlightenment, any more than it is YOUR breathing!
Is all this confusing? GOOD. We are poking into an area where we don’t know what we don’t know, an area which is transcendent to the bodymind’s belief systems and structures of interopretation!
Let’s finish up with a good reminder or two: “The Tao that can be named is not the True Tao”. ~ Lao Tsu . . . and from The Buddha, “Actions happen, deeds are done, but there is no individual doer thereof”. And “Form is nothingness; nothingness is form”. The biggest paradox of ALL.
“The guardians at the gateway to Paradise are Paradox and Confusion” ~ Zen
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