Simplicity

How can we add to, or take away from simplicity?

When we are given the essence of the nature of creating personal reality, some reasons why we create as we do, and some ideas on why we continue to repeat those old patterns, what else is there to know?

From this information we can begin making choices, especially when we are given the tools and awareness to assist us in making choices within which we feel safe and comfortable.  But we cannot add to or subtract from the essence we can only try approaching it from varied and different directions  until the ah ha moment.

This is what my book is all about, why, when and how. And the consequences of our decisions.
Those who know me have been told many times, not to believe a word I say, so why did I bother writing about my perceptions?  I don’t expect anyone to believe me, but I know some will.  I do not offer this information as the truth but as an unfolding personal journey which may, or may not, be of assistance to  others seeking to really know who they are.

Like the words in the book, they are just words and should not be believed simply because they have found their way into a book.  If the Buddhist’s are to be believed, then the moment the soul, or whatever it is, finds it’s way into the body of a baby, a great forgetting occurs.  We forget our true nature and identify, more and more, with the body of the child, the emotions the child experiences, the thoughts that arise in the awareness of the child, its environment, family  conditions, the list is endless.

This certainly helps explain why we forget, if there is anything to forget! And why we persist in taking ourselves so seriously, the more we identify with the body and its accruing personality, the more we externalise our own fears and anxieties, hopes and desires, the more we add to the creation of a reality based on a simple misunderstanding.

Life, as seen through a brown paper bag…

I am not different, if indeed I have based the book on a limited understanding of the true nature of who I / we, am / are, then my words cannot be the truth, simply an expression of one seeking to understand.  If this is true then the same understanding is going to apply to everything that has ever been written.  My analogy is the brown paper bag.  When we are born one is immediately placed over our head.  We then try and make sense of our world from within the brown paper bag.  As does everyone else.  No wonder there is conflict, and the eternal search for the self, and the many, and varied forms that search takes.  If I have a paper bag on my head, and I try to tell you something that I have seen, perhaps when I believed the paper bag was momentarily removed you may well think I am going crazy, and of course, if I tell many people, and they all think I am going crazy, then perhaps it is true, I am crazy.

There is a saving factor, I am not alone in my craziness.  Everyone is doing it, all of the time, sharing their perceptions, ideals, beliefs, trying to gather support for their reality so they don’t feel quite so crazy.  Believe in us, you will be saved… What they are really saying is believe in us  because the more people who do, the safer we will feel.  And the more extreme our beliefs, the more fundamental they become, the more polarised we find our selves.  And if we are right, then someone must be wrong.  And here we go again.

If we did indeed forget our true nature when we inhabited a human form, then all of the challenges we face in the world today are a result of that forgetting.  The goal therefore may be to remember, or not, the true nature of who we are.  I don’t think we will remember by trying to manipulate the manifesting reality.  Nor by associating with thoughts and feelings which are products of the past, by dwelling on our past and trying to change it, come to terms with it.

We experience what we experience, we feel what we feel, we think what we think, we deal with manifesting reality as we deal with it, all dependant or based upon decisions made in the past.  To try and ‘fix’ a manifesting reality that was built  on a misunderstanding seems a pretty strange thing to do to me.  If we want a different future then we may need to start changing the program that created the world we find ourselves in today.  This is not easy, as Carl Gustaf Jung once said, reportedly, “… One does not become  enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious, this process however is disagreeable and therefore not very popular”.

This implies that there is something with which we are not too familiar affecting what happens to us, what experiences we may encounter and how we might deal with those experiences.  Dr. Bruce Lipton has suggested that a major part of ‘who we are’ is subconscious, in fact in many cases  he says, only 5% of us is conscious, the rest lies in the subconscious.  Jung’s ‘shadow’!

So perhaps remembering who we are is simply a matter of accessing all that sub-conscious stuff, making it conscious, and hey presto, enlightenment.

The Shadow – scary stuff?

How can we be expected to bring that shadow stuff to the light, there must have been a reason it was created in the first place?  And if that reason was that all that stuff in the shadow was scary at some time  in my past, or overwhelming, stressful, painful, then it is no wonder I buried it all long ago.  Bring it into the light, no thanks, best kept where it is.  Until that is, the benefits outweigh the fears.

This begins to happen when we see the part our subconscious plays in creating the reality that we deal with on a daily basis.  Externally the world in all its diversity how it impacts upon us, and the part we play in sustaining it.  Closer to home; relationships at home, at work or in a social sense. And totally personally, when we understand that our association with certain thoughts and feelings creates a pathology, meaning we do indeed become what we think, and feel.

So angry or hateful thoughts and emotions are creating a very toxic internal environment, and there is a price to pay, maybe not straight away, but sooner or later the body is going to complain loudly about this mistreatment in the past.

There is a lot of wisdom in the saying “Don’t worry, be happy”.

The entire range of workshops I present are, in a sense, all back to front.  The early programs are the most complicated, appealing to the mind, which dominates so much of our lives.  Later, as people practice the work, so they are naturally more open to increasing simplicity.  It would be nice to be able to achieve enlightenment in one weekend workshop.  And perhaps one day we will, but for the time being, it is the journey that is important.  I do not hand out ‘Get into Heaven Free’ cards at workshops.

Each and everyone of us needs to come to our own understanding, in our own time, about what is important for us.  And then act on it.

My words are my journey, use them as you will, but please don’t take them either personally or seriously.  Find your own truth,  know that it is only a transitory truth, attach little importance to it, be prepared to let it go when a greater truth reveals itself.  We cannot even comprehend the truth while there is still some vestige of the brown paper bag obscuring our vision.  Know that most people on the planet, have, to some degree or other, the brown paper bag impairing their vision.

Who really knows what is going on?

If this is true, then it is easy to realise that no one individual, well almost no one, knows what the heck is going on.  So why believe them.  We tend to  associate with beliefs that give us a sense of belonging, of safety.  We may hold onto these beliefs till the day we die, possibly even after.  But did it help? Sure it may have helped you get by, but did it help you wake up to the true nature of who you are?  I try and practice the art of questioning everything, believing nothing.  No matter who wrote it, when it was written, how many other people believe in any idea or concept, a lie told many times in the past becomes the truth today.

Sometimes I succeed in this faster than other times, I may appear outwardly to believe something I have been told, or read, but I am only using it for momentary support, it may appear real at the moment, but time is the great leveller.  Will it still be true 5 minutes from now?

I can reflect on my understanding of certain information in the past, and see how, embarrassingly, way off I was.  Use what ever you need to help you along the way, like a crutch helps you get around when your leg is broken, but discard the crutch when the leg heals.