Saturday, December 28, 2013

A Region Of Freedom

Close observation discloses that most of us, most of the time, behave and act mechanically, like machines. The specifically human power of self-awareness is asleep and the human being, like an animal, acts more or less intelligently solely in response to various influences. Only when man makes use of his power of self-awareness does he attain a level of freedom. At that moment he is living not being lived.

E.F. Schumacher, the internationally known economical thinker, wrote the 1973 book Small is Beautiful His book is one of the most influential books of the 20th century. The notion that we are asleep when it comes to understanding self-awareness is accurate. We don’t know the self, and most of us have no interest in knowing it. We live life through the thoughts of others. Our own thoughts are silenced by the crowd of conformity.

Our actions change what is acted upon. Action implies the vast possibilities within our focus. Our focus is not limited to physical focus. We can also focus on the self we consider the soul. When the ego is turned inward we begin to live another focus. The action of our egos inner focus changes the action within our soul. We begin to sense a region of freedom. In that region, the action of self-awareness changes our physical actions, and we begin to live more than one life.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Creative Dilemma

First we have to understand what awareness is: to be aware, aware outwardly, the colors, the proportions of this hall, aware of the various colors that you have on, aware without any choice, just to watch.

And also to be inwardly aware of all the movement of thought, the movement of your gestures, the way you walk, the things you eat the habits you have formed, again without choice, merely to observe attentively.

You cannot be aware if there is a division between the observer and the observed.

J. Krishnamurti, the popular 20th century writer, traveled around the world speaking about meditation, human relationships, and how we can effectively evoke positive change in our global society. Krishnamurti understood the concept of awareness. Awareness is the action of consciousness. Consciousness is a dimension of the action made possible by creative dilemmas. Our conscious identity seeks stability while action seeks change. But our identity could not exist without change. Our identity is the result of action, and therefore is part of it. That is one of the creative dilemmas within the action of consciousness.

Our ego is the result of another creative dilemma. Our consciousness of self tries to separate itself from action. But our identity or consciousness can’t exist without action, so the self creates another creative dilemma.

When we try to divorce the self from action, and make it an objective perception we restrict our awareness of self. Creative dilemmas are areas of reality where our inner awareness can experience itself. Experience is the expanding action of all consciousness.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Identity's Action

We are disturbed, not by things, but by the way we perceive them.

Epictetus was a first century slave. Somehow he got the message that he was the master of his own life. Our individuality is never lost. We exist and continue to exist after death. Our individual consciousness grows in what we call the after-life. It is a state of becoming aware of our actions. Our identity is action, and it is always conscious of itself.

Identity is also a state of existence. It is action within action. Identity is unfolding action upon itself. Through this interwoven state of self action an identity is formed. The energy within action, and the working of energetic action upon and within itself forms our identity. Identity can be defined as action’s effect upon itself.

But, we don’t perceive our identity that way. Identity to us is DNA, family traits and learned behavior. All of those things are actions of our consciousness. They are products of the energy that created them.

We are educated to believe that this almighty energy is a separate energy. We call it supreme energy, but there is no separation between action and identity. There is only the perception of separation between the observer and the observed. We forget that the observer and the observed is one and the same in consciousness.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Dreamers Dream

If you’d look at nature truly One as all examine duly! No thing’s inside, outside neither: In is out and both are either. Grasp it quick, let nought confound you, Sacred secret all around you.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe was a pivotal figure in German culture. His work had a major impact on German philosophy. He set the stage for other great thinkers around the world. His view was the human race was a stage through which different forms of consciousness interact. In this stage of consciousness, humans must learn how to handle their own energy manifestations, and then see the results of those thoughts and emotions in action.

We form civilizations from the energy within our emotions and thoughts. At some point we realize that our material creations are our responsibility. For centuries we have existed in the soundproof room of religion. This room is filled with the fear of self-responsibility. We expect some supreme being to rescue us from our own thoughts, and the emotions that impact our physical reality.

Goethe knew better. He studied nature and understood the dynamics of self unity. He knew the agony and sorrows that are felt in this reality are necessary lesson that must be learned. He learned to manipulate the physical energy he created, and he felt the sacred secret within all of us.

Humans dream the same dream at once, and a time/space world becomes physical. It is a play within a play. The dreamers dream, and the dreamers within the dream, dream. There is no end to the nature of our dreams, and there is no end to the nature of the consciousness that creates expanded versions of our individual dreams.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Creative Dust

The bamboo shadows are sweeping the stairs, But no dust is stirred: The moonlight penetrates deep in the bottom of the pool, But no trace is left in the water.

D.T Suzuki found that Zen poem, and used it to demonstrate our lack of understanding when it comes to using the shadow that our inner self projects. The inner self sees through the lens of the ego, but the ego has the ability to twist and turn its lens in other directions. It creates inner shadows that touch the creative dust within our thoughts.

We exist and function in a certain plane of reality while we are physical. We intently focus on that reality, and ignore the other planes that exist adjacent to our physical one. Our psychic focus inhibits awareness of other realities until we are ready to intently sweep our ego with inner self moonlight.

Inner self moonlight doesn’t exist in rational thought until we turn our focus to the transpersonal realities that surrounds us. Making that turn threatens our survival until we realize that survival is satisfied through intention. The desire and intention to feel the inner self is the moonlight that penetrates our somewhat capricious egotistical lens.

When we move our focus to another plane we discover a self that is:

The Dust That Does Not Stir

The Water That Is Still

And The Offspring

That Prevails.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Magical Spontaneity

The things we now esteem fixed shall, one by one, detach themselves, like all ripe fruit, from our experience and fall. The wind shall blow them none knows wither. The landscape, the figures, Boston, London, are facts as fugitive as any institution past, or any whiff of mist or smoke, and so is society, and so is the world.

The soul looketh steadily forwards, creating a world for her, leaving worlds behind her. She has no dates, no rites, nor persons, nor specialties, nor men. The soul knows only the soul; the web of events is the flowing robe in which she is clothed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote those thoughts in his 1841 essay, The Over-soul. As we travel on this physical journey, we know the fruit of all of our relationships will ripen and then change into something else.

Emotions pour through us as we react to these changes. We forget the spontaneity of our soul and try to use reason to justify the sense of cause and effect we create. We overlook the discipline within our own spontaneity, and overlook the spontaneity of nature.

We feel the miraculous spontaneity of the sun, and watch the magical spontaneity of flowers, bees and the earth in all its glory, but we take them for granted. Nonetheless, spontaneity has its own discipline. It is truth in action. That discipline is the robe Emerson talks about.

So where does the wind of the soul blow all these fruits of spontaneity? Religion paints a shadowy picture. Faith, they say, will be the vehicle that puts that fruit back on our barren emotional trees of life. But there is more to us than faith in fear. Perhaps most of our fruity relationships never leave us. Perhaps the fruit is born again and again in the magical spontaneity of an individual reincarnational cycle.

Perhaps the materialization of our physical personality, and all other personalities is just one layer in that cycle. The other layers are not readily known to our ego, but our inner self retains the identity and knowledge of those layers, and uses them with the multidimensional discipline that exists within us.

Saturday, December 7, 2013

An Adjusted Blueprint

My mind was a mirror: It saw what it saw; it knew what it knew. In youth my mind was just a mirror. In a rapidly flying car, Which catches and loses bits of the landscape.

Then in time Great scratches were made on the mirror, Letting the outside world come in, And letting my inner self look out. For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow, A birth with gains and losses.

The mind sees the world as a thing apart, And the soul makes the world at one with itself. A mirror scratched reflects no image… And this is the silence of wisdom.

Edgar Lee Masters 1919 poem, Ernest Hyde is part of his work, The Spoon River Anthology. His Anthology is a collection of epitaphs written by the inhabitants of a small town cemetery in Spoon River, Illinois. In death, truth and free will abound, but in life free will as well as truth can be unmanageable by-products of the ego.

Our free will is an innate gift, but we have a blueprint within us that guides us, and helps us function as individuals and as a race of people. We can override that blueprint, and often do, thanks to the portion of the self called the ego. Our ego is the lens for the inner self. When that lens is distorted by beliefs and perceptions, our focus changes and so does our inner blueprint.

Masters calls the distortion the birth of the soul in sorrow, but the soul doesn’t experience sorrow. It is always in a state of well-being, and it is always prodding us to sense our inner reality with or without the help of our ego. We constantly put obstacles in front of the ego, so we can use our version of free will. We tend to over-sensitize and over-develop our egos because of those obstacles. Our lens becomes foggy from the challenges. But even in the fog, the silence of our own wisdom is like a rapidly flying car. It always offers us a ride to our inner self on an adjusted version of our original blueprint.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

A Wave Of Two

This world flickers from light to dark, brother.

I miss your brilliant light.

Now, a bright beam sifts through our youth

A seaside beach, a mother’s treat

Built our nest without regret.

Brother’s dreams, far-reaching schemes

Dressed in suits, states in pursuit

You grew tomatoes, I sipped grapes

Sublime the quest our mates knew best.

Then Age took us for a ride

Twists and tangles, laughs and angles,

Filled our lives with means and fearful seams.

We found a bridge in the mid

And crossed it like we knew

That life would be a shallow sea without our wave of two.

Happy Birthday, Bob!

In Memory of Bob Manogue 1954-2013.

Hal Manogue 12/5/2013

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Water Of Creativity

In the falling snow

A laughing boy holds out his palms

Until they are white

Richard Wright’s work helped redefine race-relation discussions in America during the mid-20th century. In his later years, he became enamored with Haiku. This African-American author wrote over four thousand poems. In 1998, his book, Haiku: This Other World was published.

Haiku is an art form that few of us recognize. It lives outside the boundaries of accepted thought. Haiku redefines the imaginative lines of desire, creativity and expectations. When we are immersed in these poems, we find ourselves searching between those lines for the meaning. The meaning is in plain sight, but our sight is fixed on the words not the meaning.

We have the impetus for incredible creativity within us. We know this impetus exists, and we give it an exalted name. We project this impetus outward and make it stand on its own in order to visualize it, but it is never a separated from us. Just like the laughing black boy in Wright’s poem the impetus to be what we desire to be is an innate state of being.

Our innate knowledge retains the memory of this state. Within that knowledge is the impetus for change, survival, creativity and development. Just like the falling snow that contains the water of creativity, we sense the whole gestalt that formed our impetus.