I have a friend whose life suddenly took a turn for the worse... rather unexpectedly. She is a person I admire greatly, and as she told me the story about this particular period in her life, she laughed, albeit ruefully, about this particular period. Her connection to Spirit is solid, to the point where she "hears" answers that most of us, who remain wrapped up in the hustle and bustle of life, might miss. This particular period landed her in multiple buckets of hot water all at once. When she picked herself up from the wreckage, as most of us are wont to do when we get fed up with our own bullshit, she had one question on her mind. "Why did all of this happen?" The answer from Spirit, "Well... to tell you the truth, it was because you were bored."
The mind is incredibly powerful, as I am finding. Depending on the state of flow at the time of a thought, a real desire (something that comes from our core beliefs, from our inner cells) will manifest extremely rapidly in our lives. We are all that we see. This is the same thing as saying that we are One with all things... with All That Is. It is the God within us that drives our creative efforts in "the world". In many ways I am still unclear about the mechanics of it all. Sometimes the thoughts I think, within that space of feeling like my heart is the whole of the world, will rapidly manifest in the exterior world. We are not disconnected, after all, from All That Is. This is why the interior of a person... the real interior (as opposed to the often faked "psychological" state)... is so important to the core experience of life that a person has.
Let me distinguish the real interior from the psychological interior of a person before I continue with the rest of where I am going with this. The real interior of a person has everything to do with the unconscious belief systems of a person. This is from every level and does include the psychological map of the personality as well. The real interior of a person is best described in terms of the spiritual. The real interior is our reality as less of an entity, which psychology attempts to describe, and more of a locational awareness, a deep inner frame of context. It definitely is displayed to a certain extent in the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious levels, but is never fully recognizable or knowable, because it is as vast as eternity and as deep as infinity. It must take into account all of the person as expressed in situational, circumstantial, and reality levels. In a certain way, each "person" is a full expression of the Universe at any one point where they occur.
What are you? When I review the latest in scientific findings, it is difficult for me to distinguish myself from my location. Alan Watts brings this up many times in his writings and in his thought experiments. I am sitting here now typing, for instance... or at least this is what is apparent to me. If you look a little deeper though, what is sitting on what? What is actually happening? I am some sort of energetic formation or collection of cells, molecules, atoms, particles, and base energy. This is my body. This is the base form that I use to interact with this world. This morning, I had sausage, eggs, french toast, and a side of bacon for breakfast. I had orange juice to drink. At what point do I become the food that I have eaten, the breath I have breathed throughout the day? How can anyone now distinguish what is grown in me and what is a facet of the very environment I find myself? If you worm down deeper into this question, you come to the point where you eventually ask, "How do I separate myself from my environment, from the food I ate, from the air I breathe, from the chair I sit upon, and from the Universe as a whole?" You begin to realize that in order to describe yourself completely, you would have to explain your entire context, including the entire Universe and any sub-Universe that you may be involved with.
At any one point the Universe is expressing itself fully in order to manifest a single point. Our uniqueness then is the sum total of the entire Universal effort to manifest itself in our discrete location as a "thing". This is true for everything, for everyone, for every point of existence. Talk about the importance and unimportance of everyone and everything you know or come into contact with. How much more Love could you want in your life? The entire Universe is focused on making you what you are at your location. As this realization has become part of my living reality, I find it harder and harder to think of myself as some sort of distinct "thing" and more and more as a location of all of Consciousness.
Now that the background has been laid... somewhat badly, but I hope adequately, I can continue with the original thought. As I come into contact with more and more of my whole context, I am finding that there are certain fundamental "rights" that come with this. One of these "rights" is a certain co-creativeness, where I participate in the ongoing and ever-extending active creation of the Universe as a whole. It is a participation. I hope I have no grandiose ideas of specialness or above-ness in this statement. It seems that everyone and everything has the same fundamental rights. From the "lowliest" rock to a supernova, all of creation is expressing itself as it is formed or created to be. I am beginning to suspect that it is all conscious as well. I know of my existence, and I cannot separate myself from my context. By inference, wouldn't this mean that my consciousness would be as undefined by limitation and just as expansive?
All of life then must be asking in some form and receiving in some form in order for life to continue. Doesn't the plant ask for water? Doesn't the cat ask for food? Certain inalienable rights are conferred just by our participation in the Universe. In order to tap in to this power, we simply need to know that it exists and understand that it will display for us the content of our minds at any one point.
This brings me... finally, I can hear you say, to the point. My boredom must be the expression then of what? What does one focus on when one is bored? I guess that would depend what is in one's mind at the time of said boredom. Makes sense to me. Would or could I be bored if I really understood my context... my abilities in this world? Boredom for me stems from a state of mind where really much of my life is content, but I may not have a certain resource that I would like to really blow the doors off and jet to Cancun or go climb Kilimanjaro. Yet, if I lack the resource to go do these things and I have a real desire to do them, what does that say about my state or frame of mind at that particular point in my life? If my life is asking and receiving, do I really know what I am asking for? Do I really understand everything that is in my mind at that point? I have had a tendency in the past to gloss over this when trying to manifest something that I think I want, whether it is more money, an easier way of life, women and relationships, whatever.
So what is boredom really? Why do I call it a dangerous state? All states of "unknowingness" or disconnection from All That Is have become dangerous states to me. What it means at root is that I am disconnected from my reality. It is a certain resistance to what is happening currently, my reality as displayed in me as a location of the Universe. Boredom is a base dissatisfaction with life as it is. Like misery, it is a projection of what I wish to be occurring rather than what is actually occurring. It is a blockage of sorts, where I have a certain amount of energy yet nothing to harness that energy to. If I were to cook up a big pot of boredom, the recipe might look something like this. I have energy. I have a large amount of indecision about where to express that energy. I write on my blog. You read it and become bored as well. Life itself is decision and expression of that decision. If I am blocking my own decision about where to expend a certain amount of energy, boredom must ensue.
I truly wonder how much cruelty has been enacted out of mere boredom. At its most bone-crunching level, boredom turns ugly. It becomes misery, which is the blackest point of indecision. Misery is desire unexpressed, suppressed, and shoved deep into the unconscious, typically out of a sense of guilt of expressing that desire in the first place. Boredom is a close cousin of misery. Energy, when unexpressed in life, must go somewhere. We live in a closed system of sorts where energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Therefore, energy can never be unexpressed, it just may be expressed in a different form, and many times that energy takes a much darker form, especially when squeezed, as if through the pasta machine of our minds, through an ugly place of guilt or anger or suppressed violent tendencies.
I have been working on this particular aspect of my existence for a while now. This afternoon, I felt I was in a certain place of boredom, and I began wondering if such a state can even exist in reality. I began by focusing on quieting my mind. Then I began to try to feel my way towards my true state of existence. I tried to just be. What I discovered is that the closer I came to the moment-to-moment existence of my own breath, the way my body feels, the sight of the sunlight on the snow, the sounds of the house, the movements of the cats, and a thousand other details of sense and sight and sound, the boredom dissipated. Life is sensual. Life is a huge playground of the Universe experiencing itself as me. When I became more and more silent in order to be aware of all that was happening around me and in me, boredom could no longer exist because I was no longer resisting being bored. The longer that I stay in this state, the more that the music I am playing now, the feel of the chair, the thoughts coming to mind of what to put on the page, and the longing to express became the focal points. All of it was just as magical as that fabled visit to Cancun. Different sensations, yes... but all working in such concert and such unbelievable mystery that my mind could no longer be bored.
When I come to such a place, I can then see what next I would like to experience, yet, there is an automatic release of the intent as well because my world has become engaging rather than something I must contend with mentally or something I must resent. All things are this simple. They really are. It is a simple aligning oneself with what is real and the reality of existence at whatever level one happens to inhabit. If there is one thing in life that I desire (and I desire it above everything else), it is this state of connection, of understanding, of engagement. A Course in Miracles calls it the peace of God, but one may call it whatever they want, Zen, liberation, Moksha, satori... whatever. It is the knowledge that All That Is is engaged with me, and I am not separate from It. Listening, allowing, letting go... constantly... in a state of letting life live through me at all times.
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