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I drank copious amount of the Truth
And became so drunk
My mind has become parasitic to
the light
And streams of consciousness
Slithered through me with such subtle
Vehemence
I fell in love
With myself

for the first time ever.

Witnessed the glimpse of something to a beginning.

I blinked, more than once, then series of tears followed.
Then I fell asleep.

I never flinched. I laid wide awake a few days. Thoughts ran wild, rampant some days. Some days, they ran cold, but they were soothing.

Do you know…how to observe your own mind?

Do you know…how it feels to detach from your own ego, for the first time? Even if it is momentary?

There is a song by Amy Winehouse called “Love Is A Losing Game”. In the second verse, first line, she croons “why do I wish I never played the game” and found myself asking the same question. Not that I ever saw love as a game nor ever considered myself playing any sort of games in regards to love, but…maybe, just maybe for some, love is simply a losing game.

I’m finding myself constantly grappling with my own mind, the omnipresent ego, trying very hard to not succumb to cynicism, negativism, jealousy, and keeping the simmering lid of my anger from exploding. The hardest thing for me to do is take the onslaught of realizations, wave after wave, hitting me so hard it literally takes my breath away and the physical/emotional pain so searing, my chest literally burns and feels like it wants to cave in. For the past few days, series of thoughts have been seething, so real, alive, and it’s really heart wrenching to try to stay “still” without further provocation of angry thoughts, without further interpretations woven into these thoughts and assumptions, etc. A natural reaction is to either shake off these thoughts, as if to avoid thinking about them somehow will absolve on its own, or to subdue them somehow through irrational rationales, justifications, and so on.

The reality is, only truth will set me free…right? Thus, to go with either reactions would just further my misery and complicate the already complicated thoughts racing through my mind. So what am I to do? How do I go about easing this tension in my heart? How do I go about soothing my battered, bruised, and overworked ego?

I glanced through some of the earlier entries I have posted and tried to, once again, embrace the philosophy that suffering equates not accepting things as is. So with that said, I wonder what it is that I’m not accepting or refusing to accept graciously? Am I suffering because I’m not accepting myself or because I’m not accepting of him? I suppose that would make me selfish if it was the latter.

You know what I feel like? I feel lost. Not hopeless because I do still carry a sense of resilience, but just feel lost. Confused. I feel like I’m stuck inside a 3 x 3 foot wide water well looking up towards where I see a beam of light, extending my arms towards the sky, but not really quite sure…how I got stuck in this well in the first place…

“If a seed of truth is planted it must operate, it must
grow, it must function, it has a life of its own”. J. Krishnamurti

Perhaps the problem for me is the fact that I have never planted this seed deep enough…inside the root of my consciousness. For years, I have been operating on illusions, misguided interpretations, ego-driven sub-reality and not via truth. To decondition one’s mind is awfully difficult.

Have you ever…

Have you ever stared off into space

Wondering if your last laugh

Would be shared with a lover

Or alone?

Has the storm ever passed you by

And only the ugly remnants were left behind

Spared you nothing, but vivid memories

And even the brightest moments

Cannot erase the darkness of the past?

Have you ever reached the point of no return

Only to return to the same exact place you

Promised yourself you will never be?

And you’re almost left speechless, trying desperately to

Make all the broken pieces make sense again?

Have you ever wished the phone would just ring

At the moment you need to hear it most?

And when reality suddenly sets in, sinks into your heart

Do you find yourself bracing for oblivion?

Have you ever felt the perfection of a kiss

Only to have it blown away

Felt for a moment to be blessed by an angel

Only to have fallen from his grace?

June 19, 2010

Realization is weird. Awareness is even weirder and painful. The truth is, EVERYBODY has feelings, emotions, imperfections, strengths, etc. We’re all, in essence, the same.

Truth…?

Truth is free from patterns. Truth is free from everything as we know it to be the truth, of which is only from our conditioned mind to begin with.

Truth is flexible, adaptable, pliable, full of movement, twists and turns, it’s alive, free flowing, immeasurable, everlasting, sustainable only within our own minds and never external from it; truth is freeing, truth never conforms, set standards or engage man in any rigid rules and laws of society and the even the world at large because, after all, as Krishnamurti puts it, “We are the world. Whatever we are, the world is”.

I ask myself all the time now “what is my truth?” If it is nor to be found or sought, then what? If my truth already exists within me, if the truth is already inherently who I am, then who am I? If I am somebody beyond my ego, the conditioned life, my past experiences, my very own thoughts and beliefs…”if” I am somebody beyond all of that, then…who am I? How do I explore this question if the very act of questioning can lead me to answer through my ego, my conditioned mind? How else would I be able to answer this question? Is it possible to even answer such a question at all?

I find myself perplexed, confused, a tad bit frustrated and, at times, doubtful. It’s one thing to embark on a journey to self discovery and higher consciousness, but it’s a whole different story to sustain this motivation, to keep my mind fluid and free from conditioned thinking patterns and habitual perceptions. The truth is within me, I am the truth…so what is my truth? As I have reiterated the question above, who am I? If I am separate from my ego, from my past experiences, what does that leave me, as a person?

Evolution vs Revolution.

I have thought about these two words for the past two months. Do they go hand and hand? Are these two words interchangeable? I believe so. Philosophically, spiritually, psychologically, and intellectually, one would need a sense of evolution and maturity in order to accomplish inner revolution and/or transformation of the soul and psyche. This is simply my conclusion, my thoughts. So this leads, for me any way, to series of questions > why? Why bother? What’s the point? I truly believe, somewhere deep within the depth of my mind and heart, that to not take the challenge of challenging myself, to remain spiritually stagnant/lazy/oblivious, I would consider this detrimental to my soul. To remain in a bubble within the confinement of comfort and fear-driven latency, I refuse…I simply refuse to conform, to not step outside the conditioned mind and, instead, start a journey of true, fiercely honest relationship with myself.

Krishnamurthi adamantly reiterated his truth when he said ” Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect”. This is not only frustrating, complex, intellectually challenging, and implies self-reliance, self motivation, and hard work, it is also enlightening, refreshing, and I find myself simultaneously heaving out a sigh of relief and also an exhalation of puzzlement. Why? Because I don’t know where to begin…I guess the point is that there is no point of a beginning, I just need to simply open my mind, my heart, my eyes to reality, not the construct of so-called reality that my ego has conditioned me to believe in and grasp onto…sigh…I’m starting to get off track here and not really going anywhere on this post.

Will come back to this.

CHANGE.

An undeniable reality, an absolute truth, the inarguable fact about life is that there will always be changes taking place in our lives. This is the truth. I have embraced this truth regardless how scary some changes can be; how some changes incite fear, uncertainty, anxiety, that unsettling energy that turns into literal knots in your stomach. Sometimes, changes can alleviate all the aforementioned negative emotions and may, in fact, be interpreted as liberating, exciting, challenging, emotionally/psychologically/financially fulfilling, refreshing, and so on.

However, I am learning to revise my interpretations of the notion of “change” in that I view change as something that is simply and purely “inevitable”. I either take things in stride, learn from change, discard the habits of interpreting “change” in any negative way and, instead, simply evolve and always ride the waves, so to speak, and not go against the currents of reality. This is in reflection to my previous posts of “accepting” things as is because it is “resistance” that causes suffering.

Change is only scary, not worth pursuing, and/or something we go against instead of embracing it based on our interpretations of potential disasters, potential mistakes that can be made, potential “bad” outcomes that might arise from taking a chance and going through a change. This is absurd thinking, however, because the actual word ”potential” preludes to the notion of something that never has technically happened. If it is impossible to foresee the future (we can fool ourselves to think that we have this capability) and this is physiologically, scientifically, cosmically true, that we are not psychics, the question is, then, why do majority of us waste an excessive, tremendous amount of our energy and time “worrying” about the future, thus, fearing CHANGE?

Okay, more simply put, if “change” is inevitable in our lives, maybe so many of us suffer because we try so hard to go against this truth. We try in numerous and, at times, clever ways to elude ourselves from change because our egos are telling us it’s scary, it’s not the right thing to do for now, maybe later, that change is not always good, etc. We do anything to stay comfortable, to appease our egoic state of mind, to devolve instead of evolving as a human being. We equate comfort with happiness and contentment.

This is, again, an absurd notion. It’s choosing to intentionally and continuously have the wool over our eyes and we distort our own reality; this notion goes against the “truth”. No wonder when we think we are happy, we find ourselves that we are far from happiness. We are, in fact, fearful, in a constant state of boredom or stimulus overload, we are simply not at peace with ourselves due to the fact that we are constantly driven from our egos, and resisting change, resisting evolution of the mind and soul.

Whether the changes in my life are good or bad, it doesn’t matter because they go hand in hand, and I am learning to love change regardless how I evolve because, ultimately, my goal is to continue evolving and that is what matters at this point for me. I used to fear change or I would do anything to incite change…now, I simply welcome it and embrace it.

More to come. It has been a while since I posted on here.

I never knew Lee was a philosopher…

There is a saying that each thought has an energy behind it…so did my thoughts lead me to watch a documentary of, out of all people, Bruce Lee? Read on.

I knew it! So, as I find myself dubiously watching a 2-hour documentary of Bruce Lee (and don’t even ask me how I ended up watching it), quarter way through while the narrator was describing Lee’s six month stint of not being able to do anything physical after severely injuring his back and being practically bed ridden, the following scene made me jump out of my comfortable spot on the sofa to write out some of the things he was saying.

He, himself, a master martial artist became immensely motivated through the teachings and writings of such philosophers as Alan Watts, Buddha, Jiddu Krishnamurti!!! These teachers became his constant companion. Philosophy and spirituality was dominant in Lee’s life, and I had no idea. He majored in Philosophy at University of Washington. I previously had no idea. The above mentioned people are the very same individuals who I have been spending hours reading about and listening to…

Within moments after the above names were mentioned, the film implements an excerpt from a footage of Krishnamurti’s interview in the early 1970s, and I want to quote what was said in the excerpt: “You have to be a light to yourself…(pause)…in a world that is utterly becoming dark”. Proceeding this excerpt, Lee’s wife went on to say that she believes Lee was attracted and drawn to Krishnamurti’s philosophies because they revolved around the notion of self reliance and that when one is searching for the truth, one must look inward…not outward. These philosophies was taken in as new insights for Lee, leading him to a “light bulb” or “aha!” moment for him. In relation to his teachings of the highly specific styles of which he taught Jeet Keen Do, armed with a new outlook and insights, he discarded the notion of “styles” and was more enmeshed with the philosophy of teaching in accordance to an individual’s soul. In an excerpt of an interview of Lee, he states (and I am of course paraphrasing) “Different styles tends to separate man with its separate set of doctrines”. Lee wanted to rid of this way of teaching and thinking to unify his students, the world, despite one’s race, ethnic background, etc.

Lee really, and I mean really stressed the following words, he enunciated each word as if it were his own and he says “to me, to ME, martial arts is ultimately an honest expression of yourself”…so in relation to his life, martial arts was his ultimate expression of himself. For me…I have to somehow further solidify my thoughts to a point where I am able to specifically state what would an “ultimate expression” be for me…because I really do not have a clue right now.

“To express oneself “honestly” and to not lie to oneself, that is, my friend, very hard to do” (Lee)…LOL…no kidding Bruce!

A journey of self discovery…I’m still trying to figure what this entails for me…but maybe instead of constantly questioning myself, I just need to have faith and simply move along without immersing myself with too much thoughts and questions.

Funny site…

http://failblog.org/

Quantum Physics & Consciousness

“Throughout human history, illusions of knowledge, not ignorance, have proven to be the principle obstacles to discovery” (Daniel J. Boorstin)

Oh geez, where do I start. So this particular post is just going to be the precursor to some of the newer ideas, concepts, philosophies, studies, and practices I recently tapped into. There is such a wide array of topics and theories I would like to uncover as I go along.

I swear, I think I have ADHD because as I discover one thing, I’m onto the next.

I’m just gonna dive into this, probably will not make too much sense for the time being, and I’m using myself as a sounding board here.

The approach to the studies and teachings of “consciousness” in Western civilization to date has been very limited, and has not been explored thoroughly (matter of fact, has hardly been tapped into) within the scientific/medical/psychological fields.  It is usually written off as something that is immeasurable, thus, discounting many of the more radical theories that have emerged within the last half century; majority of the scientists/doctors/psychologists ultimately concluding that the study of consciousness is simply too abstract to extrapolate meaningful definitions, concrete observations, predictable findings and/or answers. In other words, the concept of consciousness is considered intangible and, in Western thinking, bears no real relevance to the scientific and medical fields of today.

However, the continued resistance against the emergence of new wave of ideas, theories, concepts, and teachings related to the study of consciousness are starting to curtail as new theorists, physicists, neuroscientists, etc. seem to have finally found their voices within the scientific community and urging to think of consciousness in radically different, new ways (with strong scientific and mathematical evidence emerging, challenging conventional science). This has perhaps stirred up emotions ranging from dismay, confusion, outright refusal to explore new ideas to excitement, academic fervor, extreme stimulation of minds of the newer generation of philosophers, physicists, neuroscientists, etc.

So in exploring this topic, what really ignited this interest for me was the relationship between Buddhism and quantum physics. As of recently, I have only heard of the term “quantum physics”, but honestly had absolutely no idea what it was, had no clue to the nature of this specific mathematical/scientific field…(will try to explain my understanding of quantum physics in later posts and how quantum physic theories of consciousness is eerily reminiscent of Buddhist philosophies).

Originators of quantum physics > Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, etc.

Philosophies of modern physics (quantum physics) > Michio Kaku, Brian Greene, David Bohm, etc.

B. Alan Wallace > Progressive writer/scholar/interpreter of the Tibetan Buddhism teachings and philosophies

**I’m exhausted, need to get some sleep, will return to this hopefully tomorrow.