Reflection on Avoidable Mistakes

When I wake up in the morning, particularly on a weekend morning, when there’s more time, one of the often recurring thoughts I have, is in regards to all of the avoidable mistakes I’ve made; how they’ve followed me around to this day. This is a thought that I’ve had for much of my adult life, even as the stages of adulthood progress.

While I eventually clean up, whatever can be cleaned up, as a consequence of my mistakes; inevitably new avoidable mistakes are made to fill the vacuum. I suppose that many of these mistakes are only avoidable in retrospect; but at least I now know that most mistakes are not inevitable.

As painful as it is, to have this kind of reflection, there are valuable benefits to be had.

Facing the consequences of our actions is the feedback we get from the universe. If we’ve made mistakes, and we all have, then it clues us in on where our awareness is lacking and on where we should look to gain conscious mastery.

It seems that many of our mistakes are relatively easy to avoid, by developing awareness and mastery; but we’re not always aware of what we lack.

I believe the key is to continue to introspect, when a difficult problem arises, not simply make excuses or blame it on someone or something else. At some level, we typically do have responsibility, even if this responsibility is only partial.

Think deeply of the many different possibilities, of how you can re-emerge, even if it takes weeks or months to find a good path out. The best problem solving takes patience, unless you want to just create new problems.

Do this rather than surrender to dispar; because even if problems often do just go away, in many cases, they’ll often manifest in a different form, if you haven’t dealt with the underlying cause. Put in that extra effort now, to find real answers and develop genuine solutions, or pay tenfold, down the path, when the problems evolve and multiply.

Not Every Problem that Lands in your Lap is Your Fault or Under Your Control

When I look back on the years, I have created my share of problems, I have had my share of lapses in judgement.  Its inevitable, especially if you more towards the fringe like I am.  It happens to everyone, in all walks of life.

I understand this and I understand that to ‘err is human.  I don’t tend to find much difficulty in dealing with this, because I can, and have, tended to adapt.  I’ll adapt and adjust; but I won’t be dragged along, stepped on and abused.  That’s where I draw the line.  I do this, because I know that people will do this if you don’t push back, at some point; I’ve tried the completely passive approach to no avail.

The trouble tends to be with people who cannot adapt and adjust to reality.  You know, just the very basics of reality and our state of being.  These things like making sure all of your and your family’s basic needs are met, being non violent and living a stable and sustainable life.  These things are difficult and we take them for granted when we have them.  In fact, when we become complacent enough, we fail to realize just how wonderful and rare, having those basics taken care if is.

There are those of us who don’t have the ability to stabilize, to self-regulate or to control the balance between their emotional and rational centers, which actually gets in the way of basic survival and prosperity.  I’m not sure what it is.  It could be from trauma, upbringing, or maybe its just human nature, on some level, to create unnecessary problems and drama.

This is a situation where a problem becomes, not just a problem for the particular person; but also a problem for everyone else as well.  Because when everything’s just going along swimmingly and someone can’t hold it together, it makes it much more likely that things will fall apart for everyone.  This is not fair, at all, to the people who are doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

I find that people who have these imbalances, tend to be destabilized very easily and when they are, they do so in a spectacular fashion and can actually be very destructive.  I know this, in part, because I have gone through my own shit from time to time; but also because I have witnessed many people completely melt down and implode over the years, due to causes that were mostly internal to their self.  It can be extremely destructive, to themselves, their family (if they have one), friends, etc.  Destructive is an understatement; especially in situations where people abandon their families, which happens all the time.

Its a downward spiral.  Its a sort of bipolarity, wherein they perhaps recognize that there is a problem; but seek only to destroy and to change everything; thinking that if they just change enough things, it will somehow solve the core problem.

Its kind of irrational, really, because the main thing that needs to change is the person, in their own mind/body/spirit complex; yet they go about it by trying to change everything around them instead.  Its sort of like having a gunshot wound and instead of getting it looked at, going on a jog in the park.

Don’t even bother trying to say anything about this, though.  Honesty, when it isn’t something that somebody already wants to hear, only causes more problems.

What can ya do?

Well, that’s a tough question.  All I can really come up with is to try not to make it worse, if you can and protect yourself and those you care about; because you never know what can happen.

A melted down and depressed person will take aim at anyone who doesn’t want to play along with their games and will latch onto and have great admiration for, anyone who encourages them to continue doing just what they are doing.  You can take that to the bank.  I have seen it many times.  People in a weak emotional state want to be told lies and not the truth.

Its all about emotional support and distractions, rather than reasoned and honest solutions, rather than striking the root, they hack away at the branches.  I suppose this is why the meltdown ensues and continues; because clearly the coolant has not been injected into the core, which is fueled by out of control emotions, so it does not end up cooling off.

What if I Told You… That This is Just the Beginning of your Journey

There are some things, that I think you need to know. I’m afraid, however, that many of you may not have the time, energy or patience to know them. Still, these things I want to tell you have the potential to change your life forever, to solve many of your most stubborn problems and to give you new insights into the nature of existence and our place in it.

So, you think you know something about the world and your place in it. Odds are, you’re only aware of a very small slice of what is, or even of what can be known, even from readily available information

What if I told you…

That most of what you believe about the nature of your body, mind and spirit is probably wrong.

That there are profound levels of understanding, that anyone can achieve, with proper practice and dedication.

That the body, mind and spirit are all quite real and hold within their very nature, many marvels that you do not even dimly suspect.

That unlocking these marvels is the key to health, happiness and the mastery of our true self.

If you suspect that there is anything to this, you’d probably find the prospects exciting. Yet, I know from experience, that it is difficult to transition into this kind of holistic awareness.  Maybe you think that you don’t have the time, energy or patience for it.  I think that if you do indeed dip your toe in, you’ll find that you won’t have to make time for it; the time will make itself.

You’re probably busy dealing with your constant problems or escaping into a fantasy world. But there are solutions to these problems, probably solutions to all of them, which would make that struggle irrelevant and escaping merely puts the problems off until later.  So rather than escaping, why not see what you’ve been missing?

I don’t know what to tell you, other than the fact that I’m tired of seeing our lives wasted, when real, deep, profound answers are there to be had. Why not look for the deeper answers? What do you really have to lose? Your problems? Your uncertainty? Your whimsical desire driven listlessness?

The nature of reality is actually simpler than you think; but first, you must let go.

On Attachment

Attachment is a big part of our lives. It can be a driving force of our hopes and fears, our ideas about the past, present and future, our ideas about our place in the world and those in our lives. Much has been said about attachment, particularly by eastern philosophers and mystics. What can we learn from this and how can we apply these lessons to our modern lives?

If you look through philosophies such as Buddhism and Taoism, you’ll find that there does seem to be an emphasis on not becoming attached to particular things. Why is this?

Attachment is to be avoided because all things are temporary. The only permanence is the very process of existence itself, not its particular manifestations. So, we should cultivate relationships with fleeting entities, but should not require their existence/presence for our own happiness. This results in less suffering; because if we require something, in order to be happy, we will ultimately find our self suffering, when that thing either ceases to exist, or ceases to be a part of our life.

This often happens with interpersonal relationships; but it can also happen in many other areas. Anything that you can fathom, that you require, in order to feel happy, is an attachment.

What does this idea, that attachments are to be avoided, mean for us? That is the ultimate question.

Does it mean that we should live alone in a cave somewhere, without anyone in our lives, because we don’t want to be attached? Some people would say that this is the path they should take. I have a different idea, however, which is far less extreme.

I believe that the key to non-attachment, has to do with how we perceive and relate to things internally. When we think of things that we are connected to, we have to be capable of being happy either with or without those things. We have to work towards finding happiness that exists, regardless of these things, a deeper happiness.

So if we find ourselves genuinely attached to something or someone, we need to take note of this. We need to ask our selves why this is. What does this thing or this person provide me, that I could not have otherwise? I think, that if you ponder this in depth, you will find that you are already complete, even without the things you are attached to. The belief in the necessity of these attachments is an illusion.

To realize that you are already complete, allows you to maintain your connections; but be able to let go of them, when the time comes, without feeling incomplete and suffering as a result.

This feeling of incompleteness without something, is an illusion and is a weakness. It is a debt that will one day be paid. Realizing that we are already complete, allows us to live without the burden of this debt. It allows us to let go and in letting go, we lose all of the hope and fear associated with holding on.

We can have wonderful, meaningful, profound connections; but we must remember that these connections are temporary. Even if some of these are connections for life, everything meets its demise. Even many connections intended for life, meet their demise, either by biology or by change.

Enjoy those connections while they last; but be wary of becoming dependent on them. Your happiness will be much greater if you can work on this on a continuous basis.

Thanksgiving and Identical Lives

Everyone is living an identical life, in this society.

“…intrinsically, humans, as creatures of the Earth were drawn inherently always back to one thing –war. And thus we seek to correct not the symptom but the disease itself. We have sought to shrug off individuality, replacing it with conformity. Replacing it… with sameness… with unity, allowing each man, woman, and child in this great society to lead identical lives. The concept of identical environment construction allows each of us to head confidently into each moment with all the secure knowledge it has been lived before.”

–“Father” (Equilibrium)

Culture, in its worst dystopic form, will attempt to create lives that are as identical and predictable as possible. Whenever the holiday season arrives, I am reminded of just how powerful of a reality matrix this is. The same traditions, on the same day, year after year after year.

I see the value in this; but I also see the cost. The value is the predictability of the pattern. It gives people who are oriented towards these traditions the opportunity to meet various needs at various times in coordination. Given that this is mere ritual, however, it is going to impinge on spontaneity to some extent.

Take Thanks Giving, for example. Most of those who celebrate this holiday, gorge themselves on a large meal and repeat prefabricated propaganda about the meaning of the day, then sit around and watch television. In this ritual, while there is wiggle room, there is often little room for anything new. Instead of being present, we merely follow a script; the script of our perceived cultural heritage.
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Finding Beauty in the Ordinary

I think that one of the keys to happiness, that has echoed in the voices of sages throught the ages, is to find pleasure in everyday things. As part of our survival, we must often do things that are mundane. If we can’t find the beauty in these experiences, how are we ever going to be truly happy?

I sense this misplaced striving, in many of us, to escape the ordinary. That escape is an illusion. Everything is ordinary, nothing is special. Most of what seems special is merely pretending, in vein, not to be ordinary and you are amused by it, for a time.

Everything is part of the same thing and the real sages understand that they are merely uncovering what we delude ourselves into not seeing. That everything is governed by the same underlying principles and as such, has a beauty and unity with all of existence.

Something to think about, as you go about your mundane day. It’s something I’ve been reminding myself of for years.

We are the Swinging Door Between Two Universes

Many years ago, it occurred to me, how unnecessarily encumbered human beings are. This is mainly due to fear. This fear that we all seem to have, to some extent, has a dual nature.

On the one hand, fear is healthy when we use it to protect our selves and those we care about, provided we are honest with our selves (unfortunately, we all fail there to some extent). The universe can be a hostile place, where others have completely different preferences than you and would often cause you grief, or worse, if you were to do something that they, in their own construction of reality, deem contrary to those preferences.

On the other hand, fear is unhealthy when we use it to shield our selves from reality; such that we sit in our dark cave without ever seeing the light, other than the shadows that are cast through the mouth of the cave. This fear based reality protects us from change and from having to fully internalize the nature of reality.

Many of us are taught at a young age that fear-based behavior, is actually VIRTUE and it is the foundation of many forms of indoctrination. Everything from violent parenting to statism survives on the premise that we should all be AFRAID of what would happen if we were free. Consequently, we are never fully allowed to be free, because we OURSELVES are limited by the lack of freedom of those in our world.

Its an interesting problem. We all want to be free; but we are not islands of absolute freedom, except maybe in our own mind, yet we can only be truly free, in the connected part of the world, if many of us will our selves to be free. That is a decision that only we can make our selves. To even get there requires an understanding of the nature of freedom, because there are many concepts that masquerade as freedom; but are in fact little more than fear dressed up as freedom.

We are each like our own little universe, endless and expansive. The “world” is where these universes meet. As the zen buddhists would say, our “self” is a swinging door between the internal and the external.

Human beings are faced, each day, with the dual nature of self aware consciousness. This is because they exist, as a swinging door between two connected universes, as a gatekeeper of sorts.

In the internal universe, there exists an infinite expanse, created by the mind and shaped by the unique experience one has, of the two universes.

In the external universe, there exists an infinite expanse, created by a combination of nature and the minds of others. Living entities are helping to create reality for one another, as they project their intent into these universes.

Each being controls the flow of energy and information, between the two universes. This is their power and this is their unique privilege.

Each being has exclusive access to, and control of, a gateway between worlds, that exists nowhere else, in all of creation. So when we look into the eyes of another being, we are, in that instant, peering into a universe that can be accused only through the mind of that particular entity.

It is commonly thought, that the material world is the only real world and that all of existence can be explained by material phenomena. It is also commonly thought, that the psychic world is the only real world and that all of existence can be explained by psychic phenomena.

It seems as if the reality is that both phenomena are inseparably intertwined. The physical world acts as a sort of network backbone, through which all of the psychic worlds may interact efficiently.

The physical planet is the island on which the particular psychic entity lives temporarily. There may well be many different kinds of physical existences, each with different properties; but they all likely serve a similar purpose. They provide a framework through which conscious beings may interact, locally, with a subset of the conscious beings that currently exist.

Beings ebb into this world and find themselves having to intuit, for themselves, the meaning and purpose of their existence. The vast majority, turn to preexisting systems of thought and use these, often dogmatically, as their framework for how to behave and what to think. Though relatively rare, new frameworks emerge from time to time.

These mutations in consciousness have the potential, to profoundly change the way beings experience and interact with their reality. In this potential is the promise of undreamt of levels of freedom, connection and realization of our higher intent.

The real master, in this game of existence, is the master first of their self, of their intent. Both how to realize this intent and how to discern which intent they are to express.

Its exciting to think that this is what lay here before us, while dismaying to think of how much work we have to do; but would you have it any other way? Without some obstacles to overcome, there would be no reason to “be”, so one can hope that we continue to experience these challenges, that we meet them with the fullness of our being and that we overcome each obstacle and achieve greater levels of being in the process.

Genuine Freedom Doesn’t Happen Overnight

Freedom is a multifaceted concept and tends to be a bit different for everyone. This is free will we’re talking about, after all. Nonetheless, a common thread is that it always takes consistent application of time, effort and intent to achieve genuine freedom. Fall short in any of these areas and your results will be disappointing, to say the least.

Because of this, it is really important that we have our mind/body/spirit complex in optimal condition. We have to optimize our diet, our state of mind, our lifestyle in general and our relationship to the world around us. As we do this, we create an environment conducive to growth and change.

Becoming more free, is something that happens on a sliding scale. We gain or lose a little ground each and every day. Our work is never done. The freer we become, the more able we are to make further increases in our level of freedom.

The deeper realization to be had is that, awareness and self mastery are the wellspring from which freedom enters our lives.

The False Dichotomy of New Age and Scientism

I’ve been struggling with this dichotomy for a little while. Sometimes I’ll even catch myself getting swept up into it myself. I have never quite fit into the whole new age thing, though I do appreciate certain aspects of it. Also I don’t believe that what passes for science, is quite as objective as it claims to be.

This is just a a false dichotomy, in which polar opposites are presented as options, when the best option is to choose neither. Both sides are seriously mistaken, each in their own ways, and neither leads to true freedom.

The problems with New Age and Scientism are actually similar, though these two philosophies are expressed in different ways. Both are, at some level, ways of surrendering your critical thinking to outside forces. New agers fail to value action and critical thinking and are content with slavery. Followers of Scientism fail to recognize natural laws or the true nature of consciousness; they also tend to blindly accept the conclusions of scientific institutions, rather than utilizing their own critical thinking.

Its important not to fall down either trap; yet I see so many of us doing so. That’s how it was designed, to provide two false alternatives and make you think that you need to choose. You can choose none of the above.

If you choose none of the above, you can still use science/rationality and it doesn’t mean that you can’t also understand consciousness/spirituality. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. The either/or mentality leads to serious imbalance.

Mark Passio – New Age Bullshit And The Suppression Of The Sacred Masculine

This is the extended podcast version of the presentation Mark Passio gave at the Free Your Mind 2 Conference in Philadelphia on April 27, 2013. In this presentation Mark talks about the “New” Age Movement as another Religion to control people’s minds and prevent them from developing a deep understanding of Natural Law. Mark goes through 10 “New” Age Deceptions in the talk, and then offers a Correction to balance each deception. If you have bought into the hype of the “New” Age Movement, this is a video that you need to see to understand how you are being deceived.

#33 New Wiki Project Coming Online OpenMindSpace.org

I’m really happy to announce that a new free-thought wiki project I’ve been dreaming up for quite some time has finally gotten off the ground! I intend to use this resource as a way of documenting concepts in depth, linking to other resources and connecting the dots in novel ways.

A BLOG or VLOG is great for a stream of personal insights; but a wiki really gives one the ability to refine and connect those insights. I like how a wiki is ordered around concepts and ideas, rather than a stream that puts newer items ahead of older ones.

Lets say I write an article and then I want to go back and add more to it. In a blog, this is cumbersome, because you then have to bump it up to the top again and its not exactly intuitive, how to browse based on concepts. A wiki solves this problem.

I intend to continue to use this blog for the sharing of thoughts and insights, while using the wiki as a way of documenting, organizing and connecting information.

Check the New Wiki Out at OpenMindSpace.org