Silent Volcano

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers─ under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work and I shall know you. Do your work and you shall reinforce yourself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1841 essay, Self-Reliance brings us a step closer to understanding why we create the contrast we experience. We want to conform to reduce the separation we feel within the self. We want to hear someone tell us we are right, when we believe we are. We want to be a part of a group that expresses our beliefs because fear keeps our individuality under house arrest. We can hide within a group and be like everyone else. We have a cause, a purpose, a truth and we no longer feel separated from the self. We want to feel the energy of unified connection. We give our energy to others in order to sense our self worth, but we find layers of worthless self righteousness within the corridors of conformity. We convince the self to believe in conformity, and we create a reality around this duplicity in order to empower the ego self,

Separation of self is the silent volcano that constantly rumbles through our experiences. Emerson explains the folly of separation and the resourcefulness of those who vibrate with it.

Traceless Beginning

The notion that somebody literally made the world─ that is what is known as artificialism. It is the child’s way of thinking: the table is made, so somebody made the table. The world is here, so somebody must have made it. There is another point of view involving emanation and precipitation without personification.

A sound precipitates air, then fire, then water and earth─ and that’s how the world becomes. The whole universe is included in this first sound, this vibration, which then commits all things to fragmentation in the field of time. In this view, there is not someone outside who said, “Let it happen.”

Joseph Campbell shared those thoughts with Bill Moyers in 1985 and the early part of 1986. Campbell’s book, The Power of the Myth was the result of those conversations. Campbell shared a great deal of wisdom about Myths with Moyers; he explained how we live own myths on a daily basis. Life is a myth that we continually refine and change as new information surfaces physically. Our religious beliefs play an important role in what myths we incorporate, and what myths we dismiss as untruths or imagination. Imagination is the foundation for physical life. Without imagination there would be no thoughts, no beliefs and no unique experiences to incorporate into our daily myth of physical living.

Relived Events

But what shall I dedicate to you, master, say,
Who taught the creatures their ear?
My memory of a day in spring,
Its evening in Russia, a horse. . .

Across from the village came the white horse alone,
On one fore fetlock the hobble,
To be alone for the night on the meadows;
How his shock of mane beat

On his neck in time with his high-mettled spirit,
In that rudely obstructed gallop.
How the springs of his steed’s blood leap!

That horse felt the distances, and how
He sang and heard! ─ Your cycle of myths
Was closed in him.

His image ─ I dedicate.

That work is Sonnet 20, from Rilke’s 1922 Sonnet To Orpheus, First Part. Rilke had just finished Duino Elegies that year. He wrote a letter to his love Lou Andreas-Salome reminding her of an 1899 experience they had in Russia when a white horse with a bad hoof came running toward them on a Volga meadow. The horse made such an internal impression on Rilke he used it as a metaphor in the Sonnet. He dedicated that experience to God; it was an offering of joy and appreciation that came back to him every time he thought of the horse.

What Rilke is describing is appreciation for experiences that are lived over and over again in physical life. We choose to relive events, as well as important happenings and then put them in a section of our body consciousness for reference. We use this storage as recall, and make an association with a present experience, and it becomes familiar to us. When there isn’t any experience to reference in body consciousness, our current experience is an unknown. Unknowns create fear or more separation.

Rilke’s point is to dedicate those unknown experiences to God. Rilke uses his Religious beliefs, but Rilke’s God, as he describes it in many of his poems, is within him. So he is dedicating each experience to the one who created them. The God within his consciousness is the benefactor and he senses the emotional connection to that experience. Appreciation of each experience is the association and lesson from Rilke’s work.

The Mind of One

Solemn Hour

Who weeps anywhere in the world,
Without cause weeps in the world,
Weeps over me.

Who laughs now anywhere in the night,
Without cause laughs in the night,
Laughs at me.

Who goes now anywhere in the world,
Without cause goes in the world,
Goes to me.

Who dies now anywhere in the world,
Without cause dies in the world,
Looks at me.

Rilke’s poem Solemn Hour speaks of a world, that is a manifested creation of matter made of minerals and water. We conveniently mishandle, misread and misinterpret this world. We muddle through misery looking for a laugh, only to find a mirror reflecting our own sense of senselessness. We die in a secluded forest of myopic dreams and at the same time realize there is no death in the reality of appreciation.

The vibrating energy in a cry, a laugh, a move, or a death is life lived through the mind of one and the consciousness of the many.

This Moment

There must be something better,
But I’m satisfied just as I am.

Monkeys spot deer in the forest,
Fish shoot up the mountain stream.

If there’s change, there’s also repose
Which soon must suffer change.

Along the solar orbit of the night,
I feel life’s constant aching:

Smack in the middle of the day,
I found moonlight between a woman’s legs.

Shinkichi Takahashi explains beliefs in his poem, Aching of Life. Religion tells us there’s something better than the life we are living. There is something better in this moment, when we are complete in the moment. There is something special in this moment when we sense when we are born, and why we were born.

Another Cloud

When, outwardly, a man is attached to form, his inner mind is disturbed. But when outwardly he is not attached to form, his mind is not disturbed. His original nature is pure and quiet as it is in itself; only when it recognizes an objective world, and thinks of it as something, is it disturbed. Those who recognize an objective world and yet find their mind undisturbed are in true enlightenment.

Hui-neng, the 8th century Chinese Chan monastic, explains what enlightenment is in simple terms.

Silence

Silently and serenely one forgets all words;
Clearly and vividly That appears. . .
When one realizes it, it is vast and without limit;
In its essence, it is pure awareness,
Full of wonder in this pure reflection. . .
Infinite wonder permeates this serenity;
In this Illumination all intentional efforts vanish.
Silent is the final word.
Reflection is the response to all manifestation.
Devoid of any effort,
This response is natural and spontaneous. . .
The truth of silent illumination
Is perfect and complete.

Those thoughts come from Garma C. C. Chang’s 1958 book, The Practice of Zen. Reaching this state of perfection in objective awareness is an exciting thought. Blending the subjective with the objective is new work for mour Western brains, but it is familiar.

Accepting our duplicity is a step towards reflection, albeit a short step. We are perfect and complete, but we are always changing. Accepting our inner consciousness refreshes the puddle of our peaceful minds and silence sees itself in its reflection.

Outer Perceptions

Let us take outer perception, the direct sensation which, for example, the walls of these rooms give us. Can we say that the psychical and the physical are absolutely heterogeneous? On the contrary, there are so little heterogeneous that if we disregard all explanatory inventions, molecules and ether waves, for example, which at bottom are metaphysical entities, if in short, we take reality naively, as it is given, an immediate; then this sensation which our vital interest rest and from which all our actions proceed, this sensible reality and the sensation which we have of it are absolutely identical one with the other at the time the sensation occurs. Reality is appreciation itself. . . In this instance, the content of the physical is none other than the psychical. Subject and object confuse, as it were.

William James, the 20th century psychologist and philosopher, is explaining reality in an interesting way. Reality is rooted in the psychical, or the subjective consciousness, which is expressed physically as objective awareness. Reality, as James describes it, is appreciation of experiences that we create in order to sense them physically. We separate my self in duality in order to experience what we create.

Our linear thoughts keep our reality on a course that can be altered at any time. We have the ability to change or expand a belief and create another association about it. That happens constantly as we become aware of our subjective consciousness. The more we blend our objective consciousness with our subjective awareness our beliefs expand.

Blending the self into a fluid expression of appreciation is an element in the action of subjective consciousness.

Open Portal

But you now, you whom I knew like a flower whose name
I don’t know, I will once more remember and show you
To them, you who were taken away,
Beautiful playmate of the invincible cry.

Dancer first, who suddenly, with body full of lingering,
Paused, as though her youngness were being cast in bronze;
Mourning and listening, then from the high achievers
Music fell into her altered heart.

Sickness was near. Already overcome by the shadows,
Her blood pulsed more darkly, yet as if fleetingly
Suspect, it thrust forth into its natural spring.

Again and again, interrupted by darkness and downfall,
It gleamed of the earth. Until after terrible throbbing
It entered the hopelessly open portal.

Rilke, from his Sonnets to Orpheus, touches on a sense that we all experience in this physical dimension. Separation from we know not what overshadows us, and we desperately try to discover this pulsating urge through religion, science and several other beliefs that are embedded in our objective consciousness. Trying to identify this playmate that alters reality with whispers and perceptions is a life long task for some, and a pre-conceived notion for others. Rilke refers to it as something beyond this self that wanders through physical life, but as he continues to write about it, he senses how close it is to him. In fact, it is him.

The Not-Self

Suddenly he becomes conscious that his principle is not the principle of the universe that there are things that exist independently of him; he becomes conscious of it in suffering from contact with the world-obstacle. At this moment appears conscious fear of death, of the danger which the Not-self represents for the self.

Hubert Benoit, the 20th century physician, author, musician and philosopher, wrote those thoughts in his 1955 book, The Supreme Doctrine. The debate to be or not to be has been raging ever since we decided to believe that we are separated from our inner consciousness. Psychologists call it our unconscious, but there is nothing unconscious about it. We are more unconscious in our waking objective state of consciousness than we are in our subjective inner consciousness.

The shift in conscious awareness has been going on for centuries, but a large audience in the the 20th century started to feel it. The shift is misunderstood. Our religious beliefs get in the way and we believe the end of the world is coming or a savior will rise from the ashes and transform the world. The shift that we now sense sense is an expansion of our belief structure.

The transforamtion of beliefs is a combination of innate elements that will change our perception of reality.

The major shift our belief struction will be completely around 2050. Society will begin to collectively feel the merging of subjective consciousness on, before and after that date.

Joyful Brew

She holds a frail jar in her hand
Into which she has poured nothing
No life’s joy or giddying brew. . .
Only a billion worlds!

Shinkichi Takahashi's world is exposed in his work, Statue of Kudara-Avalokitesvara. His world is filled with images of Kwan Yin, Zenko, and Hosho. Those figures are important in Eastern culture, but they are relatively unknown in the Western world. The title of his work comes from Kudara, which was an ancient Japanese clan founded in the 7th century. Avalokitesvara is a statue of compassion, and is often associated with Kwan Yin, who is the Buddhist model of compassion. Takahashi’s work flows in a stream of compassion that surprises, as well as stimulates actions. These actions spring from crevices in our inner consciousness. These crevices are filled with the ancient wisdom, and it hangs in our body consciousness like a sleeping bat.

Compassion of any kind is stimulated by our inner consciousness. It’s always right below the surface of our perceptions, and it patiently waits for us to become aware of it. It needs nothing, but an impulse from us. Once activated, it becomes a flame of unity that joins diversity with strands of awareness. All physical differences melt away, and a billion worlds become one when we express the compassion that is an innate feature of the self.

Compassion is more than an emotion; it is the energy of consciousness flowing through an aspect of our awareness, and notifying us of our own unity. When compassion is present separation disappears, and all life has value and substance.

To hold a frail jar of compassion, and never pour it is not possible in this physical reality. All creation and creators are compassionate expressions of the joyful brew that flows through our subjective consciousness. We live in a billion worlds, but focus on one in order to remember that compassion is a jar of nothing, but our own createful desire to be whole within our objective consciousness.

A Perfect Dark Sky

“Home I have none. Flock I have none. I am Outcast. And we fly now at the peak of the Great Mountain Wind. Beyond a few hundred feet, I can lift this old body no higher.”

“But you can, Jonathan. For you have learned. One school is finished, and the time has come for another to begin.”

As it had shined across him all his life, so understanding lighted that moment for Jonathan Seagull. They were right. He could fly higher, and it was time to go home.

“I’m ready,” he said at last.

And Jonathan Livingston Seagull rose with the two star-bright gulls to disappear into a perfect dark sky.

That segment is from Richard Bach’s 1970 book of wisdom, better known as Jonathan Livingston Seagull. There is so much wisdom is this wonderful story that it’s difficult to absorb it all in one reading. It's easy to find the self paging through the book from time to time to find a thought that stimulates an impulse within us. We are able to identify that urge and we call it inspiration, as well as insight. Bach is offering us a fragment of his consciousness and we can use it or not.

We make associations about the experiences in the book and create similar experiences in life. We never stop creating. We can fly in a perfect dark sky, and accept the fact that we are that perfect dark sky.

The Essence of a Straw

This World is Made of Our Love for Emptiness

Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence:
This place made from our love for that emptiness!
Yet somehow comes emptiness,
This existence goes.
Praise to that happening, over and over!

For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.
Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
That work is over.
Free of who I was, free of presence, free of
Dangerous fear, hope,
Free of mountainous wanting.

The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece
Of straw
Blown off into emptiness.

These words I’m saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw: words,
And what they try to say swept
Out the window, down the slant of the roof.

The 13th century philosopher and poet Jelaluddin Balkhi, better known as Rumi, wrote that poem about consciousness and never called it that. Rumi used words like emptiness and existence to explain the foundation for the energy we project into physical life. We don’t know how to explain or describe this sensation that singes all our senses. We believe it never touchs them physically so we create other realities to experience in order to find other aspects of the self. Each self arranges energy into understandable forms, and our imagination develops a comfortably existence in the waters of diversity.

The water is a baptism of emptiness filled with the here-and-now self, which creates mountains to either climb or ignore depending on how open and accepting we are. This sea propels us from one mountain to another looking for a straw of remembrance. The deafening sound of nothing drips down the mountain, and forms a cloud of verbal thoughts. The sameness of the words dissipates into a fine mist of wisdom that showers us in awareness. We suddenly sense that the essence of a straw is always within us.

Casual Simplicity

How happy is the little stone
That rambles in the road alone,
And doesn’t care about careers,
And exigencies never fears;
Whose coat of elemental brown
A passing universe put on;
And independent as the sun,
Associates or glow alone
Fulfilling absolute decree
In casual simplicity.

Emily Dickinson, the 19th century recluse, understood the vibrations of life. Everything was conscious in Emily’s world; a stone, the trees, the babbling brooks, and the clouds in the sky. All of those physical manifestations appear differently to each individual because they are another quality of consciousness that constantly changes. They are energy that express a form of subjective awareness. They are in our objective focus so we can remember the diversity that exists within consciousness.

What would life be without a rock? What would water do without the rock filled mountains? What would we be if we omitted rocks from our consciousness? A rockless universe would be another dimension to experience.

Rocks are a different intensity of consciousness. We depend on them to rationally form a physical world for us to exist in. Like water, they make our physical world appear whole, and filled with substance. Our life extends through the cracks and crevices of these created vibrations, when we perceive rocks as consciousness. Each rock is a universe of minerals that contain a world of abundance. Void of beliefs and perceptions, rocks expand in consciousness in complete contentment. They are unemotional and have no beliefs. The consciousness of rocks protrudes through the air, and dances with the clouds. Rocks mingle with natural elements and change form in order to express their physical consciousness.

Stones sit quietly, but express a quality of casual simplicity and artistic flare. Fulfilling their absolute decree, stones are content to be rocks of noble indifference.

Primordial Images

Do we ever understand what we think? We understand only such thinking as is a mere equation and from which nothing comes out but what we have put in. That is the manner of the intellect. But beyond that there is a thinking in primordial images, in symbols that are older than historical man; which have been ingrained in him from earliest times, and, eternally living, outlasting all generations, still make up the groundwork of the human psyche.

It is possible to live the fullest life only when we are in harmony with these symbols; wisdom is a return to them. It is a question neither of belief nor knowledge, but of the agreement of our thinking with the primordial images of the unconscious.

Carl Jung, the 20th century Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology, wrote those thoughts in his 1936 book, Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Jung is describing what Eastern philosophy has expressed for centuries. As Jung said, we only understand what we perceive and believe. Eastern thought is filled with other beliefs and perceptions that made Western man think, but he was unable to understand his thinking until minds like Jung and those before him made Western sense of it all.

Jung is explaining inner consciousness. He calls it unconsciousness, but the inner consciousness is much more conscious than what we call our consciousness. Inner consciousness, as Jung points out, is the foundation for our ego and body consciousness.

We don't need to reconnect with our inner consciousness; we have never been disconnected from it. It guides our waking consciousness. Our created beliefs, as well as our primordial beliefs, never disappear while we are focused physically.

Jung said that we can only live a full life when we are in harmony with our inner consciousness. What he means is when we are in harmony with our inner consciousness pain and suffering are accepted. We take responsibility for creating them.

The Sid Series

Imagination is the foundation for all reality. Impulses stimulate thought and we create perceptions and beliefs from those thoughts, which become experiences. What we believe we experience and no one understands that better than my friend Yvonne Perry. Trying to create a visual image of Yvonne is not hard to do. She is an author, publisher, freelance writer, editor, business women and a trusting friend. All those titles describe Yvonne’s physical activities and accomplishments, but Yvonne is much more than all those descriptive messages. Yvonne is a whole within our connected consciousness that shares the qualities of her essence using a delightful and educating façade, that captivates our physical, as well as spiritual energy.

Yvonne’s New Collection of Short Stories express those qualities perfectly. Yvonne uses words and symbols that children of all ages can relate too. The Sid Series is a unique collection of short stories that are rooted in imagination and truth. The series is a collection of holistic stories that expand our awareness. The Sid Series tells us something about ourselves. The 12 stories in the collection deal with different topics that children and adults have a difficult time understanding and believing. Yvonne, through her artistic story telling ability, brings those topics into focus, so they can be discussed and experienced in a natural and holistic way.

The Sid Series is an insightful look into the world within all of us. Yvonne identifies with that world and brings it to our physical reality, so we can appreciate who we are and why we are experiencing the beauty and the wonders of physical life.

For more information about Yvonne’s work and her services visit: http://www.TheSidSeries.com or www.writersinthesky.com

Children Have Much to Teach Us About Past Lives

Does your child talk about when she used to be someone else? Listen to her. Write it down. She could be talking about a past life. Children are a lot more aware of the spirit realm than most adults realize. When a soul comes into a body, it brings with it cellular and/or conscious memory of where it was before coming to earth.
Without prompting, many children as young as two years of age remember and speak of their past lives. Some describe details, people, and events of that life that they had no way of learning in this life. The Sun Newspapers in Sri Lanka has a short documentary on YouTube (http://ow.ly/y4z2) about a young girl who remembered living and dying in a village not more than six miles from her current home and life. When taken to the village, she instantly recognized her home, called the names of her siblings, and went directly to the cabinet where her toys were stored in the past life. Fortunately, both sets of her parents accepted this phenomenon and she is allowed to spend time in both homes.

ABC News shares a story about a boy named James Leininger who recalled details of his past life as a World War II Navy pilot who was shot down and killed over the Pacific. James had terrible nightmares about a plane crash; and he knew details about airplanes and a pilot named James Huston Jr. that he couldn't have known at such a young age. Once his parents researched and found evidence supporting the boy’s claim, they believed that he was the reincarnation of James Huston, Jr. and his nightmares stopped. http://ow.ly/y4zY

Some parents either don't notice what their child is saying or don’ believe it's possible that the child is remembering a past life. They may discount the experience and think the child is making it all up. If you child wants to tell you who they were or how they died in a past life, please listen. Children have much to teach us, and these experienced souls have come to us for a reason. Not only are past life experiences real, they affect us in our present journey. Having knowledge of your past life may explain some behaviors, habits, or health challenges we encounter in this life.

Reincarnation was once an accepted belief, but thanks to the Second Council of Constantinople in A.D. 553, many people were led to believe that humans only have one life or one chance to get it right in order to avoid eternal damnation of the soul. Even today, according to Dr. J. Chiappalone’s book Keys to Reality, more than 60 percent of the world's population still believes in reincarnation. According to a 2005 Gallup poll, only 20 percent of Americans believe in reincarnation.

While my book, The Sid Series ~ A Collection of Holistic Stories for Children, does not directly mention reincarnation, it does allude to it in “Puppy Love ~ Dealing with the Death of a Pet.” As a child, I had no one to help me understand some of the paranormal things I experienced. Naturally, I feel it is very important to give parents and grandparents a comfortable starting point for discussion on topics that aren’t easily explained to children. Reading my book to a child is probably going to spark some questions from your little ones, but it the stories are written to reassure children that it’s okay to talk about spiritual things. I invite you to take a look inside the book at http://TheSidSeries.com
Additional reading
http://www.childpastlives.org/
http://paranormal.about.com/cs/reincarnation/

Sameness

In the words of Dante:

The Now is the moment to which all times are present.

Aristotle said it this way:

If the before and after are both in one and the same Now, then what happened ten thousand years ago would be simultaneous with what is happening today and nothing would be before of after anything else. . . Then
Everything would be in anything and the universe is in a grain of millet only because the grain of millet and the universe are both existent at the same time.

Putting the Now in a linear context is what we do physically. We only focus on what we are doing in a linear fashion. Experiencing simultaneous manifestations is more that the brain can handle in our present state of awareness, but that state is constantly changing. Our subjective consciousness is always in action; non-physical energy shapes our perceptions and beliefs. Thanks to quantum physics we are able to understand that space does not exist without an object. Objects must be surrounded by space to exist. Space has features that allow it to curve around objects, so space is actually a form of consciousness and so is time. Objects must endure to exist, so time is the duration of objects. Without objects there would be no time, so time and objects are one. That would mean that space, time and objects are one consciousness expressing itself in different forms. Newtonian physics was the door that opened our objective awareness to Quantum physics, because Newtonian physics remained the same in our objective awareness.

Not only are we the same, but different physically, our non-physical essence is the same, but chooses to express itself in a variety of conscious forms. We express these energy forms in time and space, but time and space is different depending on what form or object we choose to manifest.

Dante and Aristotle and an assortment of other Eastern and Western philosophers say that the world, as we perceive it, is actually one consciousness, expressing itself in different forms. That thought can send the imagination into overtime. Our diversity creates expansion from the sameness of consciousness. Without subjective diversity, we would stagnant in objective sameness. There would be no action other than the same action.


We constantly relate to sameness, but we crave diversity and challenge in order to expand physically. We immerse the self in groups and networks, to feel the sameness, but when they become too similar we choose diversity in order to continue the process of objective awareness. Social groups want to keep us the same.

Physical group members get caught in the trap of complacency. Members convince themselves that their mission and goal is true. They use partial truths to fuel their intentions. Those intentions usually have economic motivations and expectations.

Words like real, authentic, true and spiritual are used to influence perceptions and beliefs within a group. Political and religious perceptions and beliefs that are ego motivated under the guise of truth try to control, rather than expand the individual.

A Composite Of Opposite Thoughts

The world is a unity of opposites,
From the Formed towards the forming, is essentially a world
From present to present, this moment of the eternal present
is the unity of opposites.

Kitaro Nishida, the 20th century Japanese Philosopher, incorporates both Zen and Western thought in his writing. His thoughts about unity within our world of opposites are from his 1958 book, Intelligibility and the Philosophy of Nothingness.

We are taught to believe that opposites are not related. We believe they are dangling participles of life and they function independently. But moments as we think of them are a composite of opposite thoughts. We create a framework of opposites so the nonphysical self can form a corporeal reality. In Eastern thought Ying and Yang are united to express physical reality. There is no night without a day; no good without an evil. Right is the bedfellow of wrong. In every moment we have the ability to choose an opposite and form an experience.

Physical consciousness is a gestalt of beliefs. Our beliefs are filled with opposites. We rely on them. They are road maps for our choices. Our choices alter the present, future and the past. We are always forming and then moving our conscious mind toward form in this physical reality. Reality is the unity of opposites. The unity of opposites can be considered a definition for nature. As part of nature we are the thesis, antithesis and the synthesis of it.

Time

The Poet
Farther from me, o hour, you grow.
Your wingbeat wounds me upon its way.
What would I do with my lips, though?
With my night? With my day?

I have no beloved, no shelter,
No homestead at which to be.
All things I lavish my self on
Grow rich and lavish me.

Rilke, the master poet of 20th century Modernism, was born in Prague. His poetry expresses the inexpressible within us. He hand dips early 20th century thought in a bowl of questions, and molds it into a timeless mixture. His words are tumbled and then dried in a vat of emotions and a fragile reality emerges.

Rilke understands time for what it is. Time frames experiences. Time blends night and day into hours, and we wrapped those hours lavishly around our minds and count them. Our beliefs and perceptions slip through the invisible halls of time and they form our experiences.

The art of time is etched in our conscious mind, and we play with it in our unconscious. We become what we believe and blame time for spending the hours to dress itself in minutes. Our reality floats through the cracks of consciousness and we constantly stuff it into a personal memory capsule.

Our capsule accents our conscious mind with the glow of time. The glow grows rich in our capsule, but we berate it for being so limited. But, time is not the culprit. Our beliefs about it creates the limits.

We Already Know

We have to construct the world in terms of the general functioning of the world. Thus as disclosed in the fundamental essence of our experience, the togetherness of things involves some doctrine of mutual immanence. In some sense or other, this community of actualities of the world means each happening is a factor in the nature of every other happening. . . We are in the world and the world is in us. . . This fact of observation, vague but imperative, is the foundation of the connexity of the world.

Alfred North Whitehead, the 20th century English mathematician and philosopher, wrote those thoughts in his 1968 book, Modes of Thought. Whitehead does make an interesting observation. All our experiences are connected in some way. We may not relate to that thought unless we take the time and focus on our beliefs and perceptions. We choose to experience people and places at different points in time in order to expand our awareness.

That notion may be hard to swallow for some people. Some folks believe there is a divine order that programmed us to choose certain beliefs. Others might believe that we are pawns in the game of life. They believe some higher power is doing the thinking. All beliefs are valid to the believer.

The world we create is always changing and we become aware of other aspects of the self in each experience. It’s not just one self creating diverse realities, other aspects of our psyche help the process along.

In a world that is a whole part of another world, any energy form can manifest at any point in time. The point is, there is no exact way to experience physical life; it is an individual creation that is connected to a whole, but the whole accepts and allows what is express.

Non Conformity

There are voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most requests is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you yourself and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1841 essay Self-Reliance awakens us from a deep sleep and we find my self spinning with agreement. How did society get to the point of being a sharp judgmental instrument that cuts into the psyche of the individual? We allowed it to happen, no doubt. All the bickering about what is right and just and what is fair and honest are empty words that are thrown from one person to the next for control purposes. We give up control of my mind to a society that takes it to a mountain top filled with fear and anxiety and then it is immersed in the dark holes of religion, politics, history, war and science. We form a belief structure based on our distorted opinions of the self and we live those distortions through the experiences of society.

Conformity is our badge of honor. It is verification that we have handed over the keys to our objective consciousness to others who will use it for material gains and self righteous accomplishments. We find my self bowing down to a group of peers that have become lawmakers by their own dedicated design to serve, but then change that design to serve their own needs. We see a country that is unaware and belligerently conforming to values with no substance and laws with no compassion. We wonder why the diversity within this group of ignorance abuses itself with violent acts of separation that create more of what it fears. We ask the self why we are experiencing this blatant hypocrisy and then realize we want to feel the intensity and the emotions that boil over in this pot of emptiness.

Emerson famous statement, nothing is more sacred than the integrity of my own mind reminds us that we want to experience society in this form. We want to lose control and then regain it. We crave diversity and want to fight it, so we know what it feels like to be cut in half by our consciousness. We bring this reality into awareness and expand from it. Without it, we would not be who we are. We would not sense the meaning of life in every moment of it. We would drift into complacency only to be jolted back into another society that expresses the same lessons in a different way. This is our life and we choose to be physical at this moment in order to expand from the consciousness we accept in it.

Change, as the politicians say, is the answer, but change is not a hose pipe that is turned off and on. We exist in the action of change. Change is a quality of consciousness that assists us when we become aware of what it is and what it is not. Society and the fragmented groups within it are constantly changing in order to become aware of who they are and we are aware of those changes, so we can expand in our awareness.

Awareness is not conforming; it does not control or seek approval. It has no laws or judgments to express. Awareness brings another aspect of consciousness into being and we become that aspect. We accept what Iwe have created and will change it when we choose too. We live in a joint-stock company not to reap the rewards of conformity and power; we live it to become aware of the folly in it.