Nature is Satan’s church
- from Antichrist by Lars Von Trier
I listened to an interview with Lars Von Trier where he talks about fear of nature and nature as evil.
It is an interesting topic, and one that is rooted in the cultural distrust of nature in Europe and other places, and also in our evolution.
I woke up from a dream (fuzzy on the details) where I traveled around and engaged in a variety of activities. It was all enjoyable, rich and meaningful. There was also a sense that it didn’t really amount to anything, which was partly what made it so enjoyable and rich. There was a freedom in it.
What are some of the benefits of belief? Of taking a story as true? Of identifying with its viewpoint and the identity that comes from it?
One obvious benefit is that it helps channel attention and action, often with an element of compulsiveness.
We also get to explore what is inside of the story, the world and options available within that story.
We get to notice what happens when we take a story as true, the dynamics of taking a story as true.
We get to filter the world in a particular way, adding to the richness of experience.
We get to filter the world through a sense of an I with an other, and also the viewpoint of the story and its corresponding identity.
Of course, most of this can happen when we use a story as guide for attention and action, even if it is not taken as true. We can still use it to channel attention and action, we still get to explore the world through its viewpoint and identities. We still get to add to the richness of experience through it.
The difference is the drama and reality that comes when the story is taken as true. The story and what it creates - including a sense of a separate I - seems real and substantial, and we act as if it is. And that is the unique benefit of believing a story.
What otherwise may appear as a game (lila) is now taken as a real death-and-life drama. That is the real and juicy gift of beliefs.
There is a core mistake in most of our lives: We take stories as true, including the basic story of a separate I in whatever form it takes, for instance as a doer and observer.
And yet, that mistake is not a mistake. It has infinite causes. And it is part of the play of God, another way for God to explore and experience itself. How else would God experience itself as finite? How else would God experience drama, and being completely caught up in drama? How else would God experience the drama of seeking and eventually “finding” itself?
The initial mistake only appears as a real mistake when stories are taken as true….
I keep coming back to this one as well…
Alan Watts suggested this exploration:
What if I could chose the content of my dreams, and each dream contained lifetimes of experiences, what type of dreams would I chose?
I may start out with choosing to get everything I want. (Everything my personality wants). Wealth. Leisure. Success. Security. Tropical beaches. Intimacy. Pleasure. Happiness.
After a while, that may get a little boring and stale, so I would introduce something to spice it up, maybe some light challenges. Some minor snakes in the paradise.
But knowing that it is a dream makes these challenges less interesting, so I may chose to forget that I am dreaming, as I am dreaming, just to spice it up further.
Even forgetting that it is a dream, light challenges may get a little stale, so I may chose to make the challenges more heavy, more dramatic. Poverty. Disease. Violence. Fall from grace.
To spice it up even further, I may chose to realize - or have an intuition - that it is a dream, and then strive to recognize it as a dream in the midst of the dream. Strive to know that it is a dream, even as it unfolds. And to recognize this consistently, through the different dream situations.
Is a story just a story?
Yes, it is, because it is only a story. It is an overlay of thought making the world appear a certain way.
There are the basic stories of an I with an Other, extent, continuity and so on, overlaid on what happens in the sense fields. These are usually only noticed if we look a little closer, for instance through exploring the sense fields.
And there are the familiar discursive stories using language and words, the ways we talk with ourselves and others.
And no, it isn’t just a story.
Each story has some truth to it. But so do each of its reversals, and all of them have value only as a practical tool guiding our human self in the world. Or, sometimes, in guiding it in noticing what is really is. In that sense, stories has a practical value.
And they do also have another, very important, function. They create a sense of drama.
When identified with, they make the world of appearances seem real and substantial. They make the stories of a separate I adventuring in the world seem - temporarily - real and true.
They create lila. The drama of an I with an Other in its struggle to survive and enhance its life, and, sometimes, in its struggle to awaken.
Stories are really questions about the world, which means they are an invitation for inquiry.
The story of lila, of God playing hide and seek with itself, is just such a story, as Alan Watts so elegantly shows in this talk on Hinduism.
:: each dream a full life, what content would I choose? ::
Just as a thought experiment, say that each night I dreamt a full human life, from birth to death, in great detail. And say I could choose the content of these dreams, with no limitations.
What would I do?
Maybe we would start with a few months of dreams that fulfills all our most immediate desires. Then, it may get a little boring, so why not add some drama? And to spice it up, why not forget within the dream that it is a dream? And to really make it juicy, why not take it to an extreme?
:: each day the same day, how would I want to live it? ::
I just watched Groundhog Day for the first time (better late than never), and that story too is really a question for ourselves, an invitation to inquiry. If I lived the same day over and over, how would I live that day? How would I, eventually, want to live that day?
I listened to the Alan Watts podcasts about Hindu mythology, which is specifically about Brahma and lila, God playing hide-and-seek with itself.
One part I found especially interesting is in the third segment where he explores what we would do if we had complete freedom to choose our night dreams?
For a few months, we would probably want to dream about having all sorts of riches and pleasures. But it would get boring and predictable after a while.
Since we know it is just a dream, and we can’t really get hurt by it, we may then choose to include some drama in the dream to make it more interesting. Something is at stake, and we may or may not get it.
And to make it even more juicy, we may choose to make it into a life and death drama, to see how far we can take it. After all, it is just a dream and we don’t really get hurt.
In the Star Trek TOS episode Errand of Mercy, the Organians several times says nothing has happened, in spite of a Klingon invasion and several hundreds of their own dead. And that is also what some spiritual teachers in this planet says.
In what way is that true? In what way has nothing ever happened?
When I look for myself, I find that it is true in a Big Mind sense.
There is awakeness and its content of what arises here and now, including stories about this content. It is a timeless and spaceless present, within which there are stories of space and time placed on top of what arises.
In that sense, nothing every happens. It is all the play of awakeness, which is inherently free from this play, allows this play, and forms itself into this play. Nothing every happens, in the sense that nothing really happens in a dream. It is all the play of and within the one awakeness.
And yet, something does happen, when all of this is filtered through stories. With stories, there is a whole world of form and objects, including living beings, and a lot certainly happens within this world and to all of these beings.
If those stories are taken as real, then there is an I here that something happens to, and a lot of drama. I take the play of awakeness for solid objects in a real world, playing itself out in a drama of life and death importance.
If they are directly seen as only stories, and the consequences of taking these stories for real are also directly seen, then it is all different.
Then, we can freely play along and engage with the game, but now also seeing that nothing really and ever happens. It is all the play of the awakeness.
Over the last few weeks, I have come across several references to Buddhism and The Work, and other similar approaches, as leading to nihilism… It is obviously coming from people who haven’t tried it out for themselves, and project something onto it, but it can still be useful to look at.
The easiest way to talk about it is through the filter of the absolute and relative…
From the absolute, from void awake to itself, no stories are real… they have only limited and temporary truth to them, their reversals each also have truth to them, and altogether they reveal the inherent neutrality of any situation. It is all God, God’s will, the play and appearances of God. No matter how it appears, it is just appearances temporarily covering up God’s play. The world of form, the content of awareness, is the infinitely varied faces of God.
If this becomes a belief, a story taken as true, it can look pretty weird… it can easily take the form of nihilism, apathy, anti-social behavior, lack of empathy, reckless disregard for social norms and rules, and so on, dependent on what else is going on in the personality.
But if it is realized, if void is awake to itself, it is very different… here, it is expressed through natural empathy and compassion, through a deepening and maturing of the human self it is expressed through. It is expressed in a deeply human way… It looks like clarity, wisdom, compassion and wholehearted engagement in the world. It looks like a life lived for the benefit of the larger whole, in a deeply (and deepening) mature and skillful way.
It is the void playing the game through a human self, knowing it is a game, and acting from the compassion, wisdom and engagement that naturally comes up in this human self when it functions in the context of void awake to itself.
And this difference between belief and realization is why, on the relative level, all nondual traditions emphasize ethics and norms… before the void awakens to itself, live your life in an honest and sincere way, in a way that does as little harm to others and the larger whole as possible, and in a way that supports life as much as possible. These may all be the temporary appearances of the awake void, but this path is one that leads to the void to be awake to itself, and the suffering is real in that it is experienced as real… so why not reduce it as much as possible.
The absolute is free from good and evil (or bad), but at the relative everyday level, it is a useful distinction… live your life in a way that minimizes suffering and optimizes well-being and joy for yourself and others, including future generations.
Some of the functions of thoughts…
Whether believed in or not, they help our human self explore, orient and navigate within the world of form. And when believed in, when a story is added to the stories saying they are true, they create a sense of a separate self, and the richness of the human drama.
It seems that lots of folks on the spiritual circuit wonder why they haven’t awakened yet. There is a resistance to what is (which happens to be what holds it, the appearance of non-awakening, in place.)
So why haven’t we awakened yet?
The immediate and technical reason is the resistance itself, which creates a sense of I and Other, splitting the seamless field of awakeness down the middle. This comes from a belief in a separate self, which in turn is propped up by innumerable other beliefs. The initial sense of I and Other is elaborated through lots of different identities which define exactly how this I is different from the rest of what is.
Another reason is that it is all the play of emptiness. It is all the spontaneous expression and manifestation of God in the form realm. It is lila, the dance of God. God manifesting, experiencing and exploring itself as and in form, including taking itself to be just a segment of this form.
Any experience, independent of its content, is God experiencing itself. Awakened or not, it is still God exploring and experiencing itself in its vastness and immense richness.
Specifically, there is a tremendous richness in the exploration and experiencing of being a separate self. Why would God let that go right away? There is so much more to explore and experience there, so it makes sense to allow the exploration to continue a little longer.
It may not always be what our human self wants, but that too is part of the game.
So if we take ourselves as this human self, and have stories about why we haven’t awakened, then exploring the genuine gifts of not having awakened may help.
It takes some of the charge out of our initial stories, allowing us to see that they are only stories, and revealing the inherent neutrality of the situation.
It also helps reduce resistance to what is, or rather identification with and fueling of this resistance. This in turn eases a sense of something being off. And it also allows for an easier noticing of what already and always is. A field of awake emptiness and form, seamless, with no center, sometimes with a sense of a separate self and sometimes not.
When beliefs are gone, the inherent neutrality in any situation is revealed.
From the emptiness side, we see that it is just emptiness dancing, the play of God.
From the form side, we see that any story about it, and all its reversals, all have a grain of truth in them.
Both reveal the inherent neutrality in the situation.
But what happens when all situations are revealed as inherently neutral?
What happens, at least in my experience, is a deep appreciation for life, for existence, for the world of form, for the play of God, and for this particular life. A deep gratitude and appreciation for it, as it is, independent of its particulars.
Beyond appreciation, there is also a quiet and deep joy in the freedom of the play of life and God, as revealed here and now. And beyond this, a joy in the freedom of the play of stories and their reversals, all revealing some relative truth.
When we take ourselves to be a separate self, it is natural to want to avoid suffering and friction. And if we identify ourselves as a spiritual practitioner, at least in some traditions, we don’t like resistance and misidentification much either. In fact, our whole practice is often aimed at getting rid of it.
As long as we want to get rid of it, or anything, we are stuck in it. We are identified with content of awareness (resistance, beliefs), which is exactly what we were trying to escape.
And when we finally see this, really see and feel it, allowing even this identification to go, we are fine with all of it… which is also when it tends to fall away.
It is tricky. Wanting something to change is what traps us. And only by fully and wholeheartedly allowing it all can it change, but by then it doesn’t matter anymore. We are doing it for another reason… because we see we don’t have a choice, and because we want to be consciously more closely aligned with what is.
One of the ways to be more consciously aligned with what is, and to allow it all, even the suffering and resistance, is to explore it from the emptiness and form sides more in depth.
From the emptiness side, it is all OK. It is the temporary form play of emptiness. All forms are revealed as inherently neutral. Or as God manifesting and exploring itself, as God’s will.
From the form side, we can explore the genuine gifts of what we resists.
At one level, we see that suffering is an invitation to wake up. When we are not fully awake to who and what we are, there is suffering.
At another level, we see that the misidentification is a part of the play of God. It is God temporarily forgetting what it is, and exploring itself as some small realms of its form aspect (as a separate individual.) It is beautiful, a beautiful play and exploration, even when suffering comes up because of it.
And resistance is an inherent part of misidentification. When we take ourselves to be a separate self, as a region of the world of form, resistance is what allows it in the first place.
Also, resistance and misidentification is what allows for an exploration of parts of the form realm in more detail. It filters a lot out, so that some regions of form come into the foreground and there is a deeper and more intimate familiarity with it. It is part of God’s exploration of itself.
In a very real way, to resist any of this, or to put it down in any way, is to resist and put down God.
In a Ground awakening, awakening to ourselves as emptiness, there is complete freedom to allow the play of any and all forms. And this also includes a complete freedom to temporarily misidentify with, and take itself as, one or some of these forms.
The irony is that when there is misidentification, there is also a desire to escape the suffering, which is ultimately a desire to wake up to what we already are. And when what we already are awakens to itself, there is a complete freedom to allow even misidentification, to allow the cycle to start all over again.
Inherent in the awakening is the allowing of misidentification over there, in other human selves and sentient beings. There is the allowing of the process of the world of form to take its course, wherever it may go, including misidentification here.
After all, it is all the play of emptiness.
That is how it looks from the emptiness side.
The form side: a natural impulse to relieve suffering, and also appreciating the gifts of suffering
From the form side, it is a little different. There is still the freedom from taking any story as absolute, as anything else as a relative truth with all its reversals having relative truths as well.
Yet, there is also compassion coming up when there is suffering, anywhere. And there is acting to relieve this suffering, either in a temporary way or in a more complete way through aiding awakening.
So within the context of a complete freedom to allow it all, there is also the natural and effortless impulse to relieve suffering. And within the context of wanting to relieve suffering, there is also the appreciation of the richness and explorations that happens in the midst of suffering and delusion.
There is nothing wrong with temporary misidentification, delusion, and even suffering. That too is the play of emptiness, or put in another way, it is God manifesting, exploring and experiencing itself.
I have been given the task of tracing a person, and it turns out to involve many people and situations, and a large amount of drama and surprising twists and turns. Finally, as it reaches its climax, I find the person at the bottom level of a very tall building. It turns out that my client and the target, and several others involved, were all the same person. I notice how it seems that everyone and everything were that same person, apart from me searching (and working) for him, and it puzzles me.
As I wake up, I stay with the discrepancy of everyone being the same person, apart from me as the searcher. I also realize that the dream seems to be all form the felt-sense perspective, not the conscious view, and that at this felt-sense level, there is indeed a sense of I and Other, I as searcher (doer, chooser) and Other as anybody and anything else. The dream seems to be a reminder for me to notice that, take it into account… there is still a sense of I and Other at the felt-sense level.
The dream is a variation of Lila… God playing hide and seek with itself, through all of us seeking God, and then realizing that there never was anybody or anything but God in this whole drama.
And it is also another variation of the dream of a composer who is a composite of many composers, and his instrument which can make the sounds of many instruments. The individuality of each is preserved, many combinations are available, yet as one composer and one instrument.
Say there is a fictional character, and you want to make the stories about him or her more engrossing for yourself. What do you do?
Pretending a fictional character is real
One way is to pretend the person really exists, to take the stories seriously and as reality. That way, you can allow yourself to go into it more fully, to put more energy, attention and interest into it than you otherwise would.
And that is exactly what many Sherlock Holmes scholars and fans do. They play what some refer to as The Game: studying Sherlock Holmes as if he was a real flesh-and-blood person, Dr. Watson his biographer, Conan Doyle his literary agent, and the stories themselves histocial documents.
Playing the game to bring out the richness of the stories
In this program on Sherlock Holmes from To the Best of Our Knowledge, Leslie Clinger - author of The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, talks about The Game, or Holmesian Speculation.
Listen about 25 minutes into the program:
It’s a game. And it’s a game we play to enhance our appreciation of the story. When we treat them as real, we can justify spending a great deal more effort in researching the background of the stories and in working up explanations for the stories in a way that brings out their richness.
Lila
And so it is with our lives as well, according to many mystics and spiritual traditions.
This human self that there is so close an identification with, that seem as an I, that is taken so seriously, that appear so real, so solid, so true. This human self has no I in it anywhere. There is no I in the seeing of it, in the awake space it arises within and as. There is no I in the seen, in this human self and all its aspects: its sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts, behaviors.
There is no I anywhere in the seeing or the seen. There is only the Ground of empty awakeness the seeing and the seen arises within and as, with no I anywhere. There is doing, yet no doer anywhere. There is choosing, yet no chooser anywhere. This human self just happens, absent of any I. It lives its own life, as anything else in the world of phenomena lives its own life.
This self, as an I, as a separate entity, as a chooser, as a doer, is fictional.
And what makes it a more interesting and engrossing character? To pretend it is real. To take it as I. To have a close identification with it. To live as if it is separate from anything else. To see myself as it, and subject to birth and death, joy and suffering, health and happiness, gain and loss, and all the other ingredients of the human drama.
There is no drama without identification with this human self. And the drama is what makes it engrossing. It is what makes it interesting, at least for a while.
A new flavor of the game: seeking awakening
And then there is a weariness of this drama. A growing readiness to move on. For Ground to awaken to its own nature as awake space, as seeing and seen, absent of I.
There is a new flavor of the game, not much different from all the other flavors, and this one is called spiritual seeking and practice.
This and the other ones are all games where human self is taken as an I, and the new flavor is to try to have this I awaken. Which of course is impossible. This human self can never awaken, and there is no I anywhere anyway - only a temporary and mistaken identification as an I and this human self, but it makes for another interesting chapter of the drama.
A new game: this human self functioning in the context of realized selflessness
And then there is a significantly new game: Ground awakens to - or rather remembers - its own nature, and now the game becomes to allow this human self to live from this awakening, to mature, evolve, interact, experience, explore within this new context of realized selflessness.
It is a whole new section of the story, yet one that is no less juicy. And one that has no end, at least as long as there is a functional connection to human self.
Lila… cosmic play, God playing hide and seek with itself.
It can often sound a little abstract. It can easily remain just another attractive (or not) idea.
But it is more intimate than so. It is alive right here, in immediate experience.
Right here, is the open awake space. That which all content happens within.
Right here is the open awake space forming itself into its own content. The content that takes the form of this human self and the rest of the world.
Right here, is the identification with the fluid content. The seeing of I as a part of this content.
And right here, is the wish to awaken. Right here is the desire for Ground to awaken to its own nature. To notice itself as Ground, as seeing and seen, as inherently absent of I anywhere.
I have been listening to more audio of Byron Katie facilitating inquiry with a range of people, and am again struck by how clear she is - and the clarity others arrive at through the inquiries.
It is similar to the Big Mind process in that people with little or no background in anything “spiritual” speak like sages - often arriving a deep insights mirroring what is said by gurus, teachers, sages and saints from many traditions and time periods.
Lila
I am also struck by something else: finding peace with what is, through seeing through our stories and allowing the belief in them to fall away, is only possible when we discover lila. That it is all the play of God.
Seeing through our stories, and discovering lila, are two sides of the same coin.
And when we see through even one of our stories, allowing the belief in it to fall away, we have a glimpse of lila. Seeing through another story, there is another taste of lila. And seeing through the story of “I” - as a segment of what is, we arrive fully in a realization of lila. There is the realization that what appeared as our business, is God’s business - and always was.
There is only God. There is no mistake.
If all is the play of God, then there must be a great deal of interest and richness in an ordinary life. There are, by definition, far more ordinary and average lives than the obviously extraordinary ones, and why would there be unless there was an extraordinary richness even in these ordinary and unassuming lives?
All of this - the words play, interest, richness, ordinary, extraordinary and so on - are just abstractions, an overlay of what is. Still, is may point to something beyond these abstractions - something to explore and see what emerges from it.
In this case, it may help us see our own lives - as they are, often ordinary and unassuming - as being immensely rich. Rich enough for God to want to manifest in this particular way, to explore itself in this life as it is right now.
And it also seems that when we allow our experiences more fully into awareness, when we are with our experiences, we realize this richness directly.
That is certainly the case for me. When I am with my experiences, there is an immense richness there - often tinged with some bliss as well, independent on whatever other content may be there.
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