We are afraid to be free
2015/12/14 Leave a comment
Past and Future
2013/12/14 1 Comment
I reblog mystic1muse´s great post here:
“The past is finite but the future is infinite. The past is useful up to a point. Yet seeking our identity in the past, the past becomes a heavy drag upon consciousness and killer of freedom. The past corresponds to a limitation, to set forms that have come and gone. Yet people define themselves mainly by the past, so binding themselves to the fixed boundaries and the circumscribed habits of personality and group.
The inner self is prophetic, so it is possible to find identity in the light of the future. There is nothing of value in the past that will not be better-born in the future. The value of what was, the soul of it, is always in motion and not long tethered to any time and form. So, when the time is right, let the flowers and melodies of yesterday fade, all their beauty was borrowed from the timeless–the source of their wonder is now and ahead upon the path of ascent.”
Reality is wholeness
2013/12/10 3 Comments
For most people, “Wholeness” is a mere futile concept, like music for the deaf. They are “deaf” to reality insofar as they take thought for Life.
Thinking – as we know it – cannot consequently grasp “Wholeness”. We can´t heal unless we question and eventually give up thought-identity.
Insanely difficult…- as this is our most precious heritage – our very Identity is and
stems directly from Thinking.
Debra:
I don’t know what you mean by “give up thought.” Have you experienced this?
Me:
I write only about things I have directly experienced.
Most assuredly, I have always wondered what it was meant by “Learn to die before you die”. I have lately understood: it is for sure the greatest challenge for man – to give up the false ego – that is, the wrong immemorial identification with THOUGHT! Thought is with other words, the “me”- identity which is so treacherously opposed to the totality of Life.
TO GIVE UP THE THOUGHT-MADE IDENTITY… – it is not less than a heroic act of courage as I come to realize that Thought has eventually nothing to do with Life…Thought is the greatest barrier to know Reality. In fact, ultimately, I see thinking as the worst disease invented by man, to defend himself from The Wholeness of Reality.
Yes…Thought which is self-imposed psychological Time – our shield defending us from directly experiencing Life.
We have to give up the false assumption that Life is Separateness
2013/12/09 1 Comment
Life is never one-sided.
But our thought is. Likewise our perception of ourselves and everything around us.
That´s the main problem of thinking basically: I choose “this”, on the expense of “that”.
We can´t imagine that a thing is both “this and that”…
Our choice is uncritically taken as the only valid assumption. Meaning that we inertially take our deliberate option as “The Thing”. It is clear that whatever we observe is biased by our ingrained one-sidedness.
Either you are a scientist, or a poet. To be a poet and a scientist doesn´t make you a reliable professional.
If I as a musician paint, compose or write and have scientific interests besides, turns me automatically into a suspicious character.
Stupidity consists of many things, but in this context, stupidity is always one-sided.
In fact, the beginning of stupidity is to be found in the shameless presumption of “either-or”. Either down or up. Stay or go. Christian or Buddhist. The list can continue interminably…
Truth of the matter is that we are irrevocably stuck in either-or and neither-nor.
In vapid concepts. Language too, may be our curse.
Most assuredly, an apple is not a pear, of course, a man is not a woman.
The problem is that thinking suspends the Natural Unity of Life – it sees the apple totally separated from the pear, the child from the “grown-up”, the woman from man.
With other words, another insidious side of stupidity is to be stuck in category-thinking. Further on – and this is the most scary characteristic for most people:
STUPIDITY SEES NO RELATION BETWEEN THINGS.
This falling short of seeing things in intrinsic relation is appalling. It is actually our doom.
SEEING THINGS DISTINCTIVELY SEPARATED IS PURE INSANITY.
We are supposed to mount but not descend, win and never lose, act obsessively without relaxing, go away but never come back.
The worst outcome of this delirious misconception is Progress – as in economic growth.
Growth can also mean tumor. Isn´it obvious? – We have totally bought ourselves into maintaining and fueling disease. Everybody with common sense sees the relation between economic growth and sickness – growth as a rampant bloating of fragmentation and disunity.
“Day-living” is our only zany answer. Night – as a metaphor for Mystery and Unknowing, the zone where our definitions are invalid – scares us. Too spooky. Too uncontrollable.
This stupid idea of separateness has turned our life into an unbearable and absurd wasteland. In the absence of the Ineffable – the Wholeness of Being – and due to becoming explicitly rational, human relations have been ruined: man has become woman´s worst foe, and woman man´s worst nightmare.
Not being able to relax and come back to themselves, people live in total agony. Not being IN RELATION to anything, they cut themselves off from any reasonable living.
Lonely wretched strangers going nowhere.
To conclude.
Everything falls back to a wrong perception of Life.
Namely, THE ONE-SIDEDNESS OF THOUGHT, which breeds Separation, Fragmentation and Lack of Relation.
Fragmentation is the sickness of the Soul.
The enormously stupid and baleful assumption that Life is Separation is our death sentence.
There is not much of an option. We have to renounce this disastrous delusion and heal, embracing Wholeness.
Everything is in vivid relation to everything.
Never let others discourage you – follow your inner call despite their harsh criticism
2013/12/01 Leave a comment
reverendroxie22:
I enjoyed reading this: julienmatei.com/2013/11/28/how-to-recognize-the-loser/
It is the truth, what you have written. I know a whole lot of people who feel entitled to what they have not created on their own. For many years I have listened to people tell me that my writing is way too “out there” for “regular” people to understand, which makes me always ask “what does someone’s ability to move their bowels on a regular basis have anything at all to do with my writing? What are you trying to tell me?” but always, I have never stayed around long enough for the answer.
I have been lifted, emotionally and spiritually, by what you have written here.
Me:
This world is unfortunately overfilled with pretentious sloths – people who assume no responsibility for Who They Truly Are, who never want to do anything real…
People living by default. People who deliberately refuse to engage in anything
sincere – whose sole interest is to guard their safety, wholeheartedly committing themselves to being no one.
As you say, they feel entitled to reiterate only what others have created.
The huge problem is that they all want to bring you down at the same level of inane nothingness.
Meaning that the only thing they specialize in is to criticize and discourage those doing something real. “Be like us – a failure. Who do you think you are?…Don´t you dare do or be anything authentic, cause than you make me realize the daunting truth that I am flop.”
I have listened to those empty morons all my life too. But not anymore. I speak and live my truth no matter what.
Most of the subjects I write about – like this one – are not approached anywhere else,
as far as I know.
These things are true as far as it concerns me, but don´t know if another person sees the verity of my writing – gaining something from it.
That is why I am so pleased to hear your words. So grateful. After all, this is my hope and highest aim:
To lift myself and others to greater emotional and spiritual awareness.
Are we dying to live or living to die?
2013/11/29 20 Comments
There is no solution unless we acknowledge the problem
T:
I believe the ‘offer’ made to us is more on the order of to-live-or-not-to-live than one of death avoidance. I think we have *learned* to ‘fear’ death, and that the only, real, natural solution is found in LIVING.
Humans seem to have a tendency to behave in ways that are contrary to the broader natural order. So there is nothing really ‘unnatural’ in that sense…about synthetics OR human behavior. I think that ‘anti-natural’ gets closer to what I am trying to express than ‘unnatural’.
Many parents in ‘developed’ societies nowadays have come to believe that their ‘job’ is done when their children reach majority ‘alive’ (as in not dead). But are those children really *alive*? Are the parents? Is the focus on death? Or life? It seems evident to me.
There is a big difference between (a) being aware of things that would interfere with living and (b) fearing death. Death is no less a transition in the Life Process than birth. Fearing ‘future’ death makes no more sense than fearing ‘past’ birth…or fearing every moment that we live. Thus I see fear as a perversion of awareness.
Are we dying to live or living to die?
Me:
The thought coming naturally to mind is:
Can we ever fully live unless we have learned to die now?
Is clinging to life living?
Is living according to any idea true living?
The perversion of awareness is actually OUR IDEA we hold about life. Whatever idea, stems ultimately from Fear. Thus Fear is the foundation of our unnatural or anti-natural “relation” to life.
Fear is consequently wrong relation to Life, cause fear exists only in relation to something.
The blatantly conspicuous reality is that everybody tries hardly to be someone. Instead of being alive they all try to be “special”. Being special is again, an inane wish to reinforce the idea – to live according to a thought.
They all “choose” to be, instead of simply being…that is, allowing the natural urge to unfold seamlessly inside and outside them. This demented hubris is man´s most dooming calamity:
“We are better and stronger than life. My resistance against anything living defines me. The more I fight and compete Life – the natural – the stronger I am.”
Such huge misconception lies at the base of our way of living.
And so the consequence is all this mad and senseless unfolding and escaping in the wrong thing: everybody is in the wrong place at the wrong time, pursuing the wrong activity, being constantly in the wrong context.
They usually marry the wrong person, they´re stuck in the wrong jobs, have the wrong friends…the list of wrongness is interminable. That is quite evident: the ones who are not supposed to be there, prevent the ones who are supposed to be where they belong.
To answer you question:
How can these insane people breed any sane and wholesome kids…?
Of course they can´t. How can the children be alive, when the parents
are diseased?…
This utterly defective life-style leads inevitably to misfortune, suffering and madness, and hence at some point, as a way out of this, man escapes his furious insanity through conflict and irrational violence, ultimately creating war…- war meaning, everybody fighting against his own misconceptions…man fighting against his and others´ false ideas.
So yes, that´s the key question:
Are we dying to live, or living to die?
With other words, are we going to stubbornly stick to these our obsolete and death-bringing Ideas and destroy the whole planet, or do we have now the awareness of the prompting necessity to renounce and let go of this calamitous hubris?
Who am I…? Who are you?…Writing as living the True Story
2013/11/28 4 Comments
Most people on this planet have no idea Who they are – that is quite evident…That because it´s no one there in the beginning of our lives to guide us towards self-knowledge. Instead, we are all relentlessly turned into some depersonalized instruments to serve a faceless existence.
Writing for me is unraveling myself, finding out Who I Am. Understanding myself. It is my weapon in this peculiar and perilous Odyssey of self-discovery. Indeed, writing is about deconditioning myself from the bullshit imposed by my family, school and society.
And in this process of inner questioning and self-examination, I naturally find that my
inherent Meaning has been there all the time, but wasn´t discernable for my perception.
No, I couldn´t see myself, as I WAS A STRANGER IN MY OWN LIFE.
When I think of it I am overwhelmed by sadness.
For so many years, in fact, all my so-called life up to now, it was not me living, but other people´s nightmares – huge and chaotic generational pain, others´ dire unfulfillment, in truth, my ancestors un-lived lives were howling inside my soul, those hoarse voices calling themselves “me”…
These blind and inertial complexes quashed my sense of self – my sense of a meaningful relation with the true Me. In the last months such outlandish and ruthless battles have taken place BOTH WITHIN AND WITHOUT – these delirious forces having incredible power to manifest so-called outward events.
These forces are what we call “destiny”…- that´s the most difficult thing to fathom.
THESE FORCES´ INSIDIOUS AGENDA IS TO KEEP YOU AWAY FROM THE TRUE YOU – from realizing who you truly are.
Nobody wants to face or acknowledge the truth in its overarching depth – I was totally on my own in this abyssal dispute, with no one beside me. I seem to have made it – so far. Fact of the matter is that after such a combat either you crumble or you come out alive – that is, enlightened. It would be preposterous to claim that I am enlightened, but, the very fact that I came out alive after these battles, points to that direction – Illumination.
Know that to retrieve your True Soul, your Inward Meaning, is the most difficult task in this world:
To individuate. To become You.
Unless you want to live someone else´s life, you will have to take this initiatory journey back to Who You Really Are. Who you truly are is life´s highest meaning. If you find your immanent Meaning you have found the living source of Creation.
You have to start telling your True Story. And in this sense, Writing is your torch in the process of self-discovery, your only weapon in the combat of the inner and outer darkness.
Not more. Not less.
A zen question
2013/11/25 1 Comment
What do you do when you neither go nor stay?
For the record, Zen fools around with “language”. Do not take literally each word. You really have to take the words you read apart, turn them upside down and inside out…that is Zen Mind.
Zen clears the mind of division. IT tells us to look at everything and anything, including people, the actions of people as a dream…a delusion. There is no inside or outside. Inside and outside are part of the One. Zen works a lot with deciphering language and feeling the present moment as it is. When we do not talk we can discern more clearly our self deceptions. Who is the ONE watching?
It is the Universal One looking at itself. Let us say it is the Mirror of All Encounters 
Jane
Related article:
https://julienmatei.com/2012/05/01/stop-thinking-a-zen-meditation/
Give up what you think you know, if you want to truly know
2013/11/24 7 Comments
He:
Your words brought to mind a statement by one of my favorite mentor:
For him to have understood me would have meant reorganizing his
thinking… giving up his intellectual ballast, and few people are willing
to risk such a radical move.
– Edward T. Hall
How few people grasp the difference between ‘description’ and ‘explanation’.
Me:
Eventually, the function of the intellect is to “protect” us from truly living.
When the intellect ceases, love arises…- love being the totality of life.
And where there is totality, true understanding of “the other” occurs
spontaneously.
So that´s why most people are unwilling to risk such a radical move
as to giving up their intellectual ballast:
They are inconceivably afraid of Love, afraid of what true and direct
Understanding entails…
Julien Matei
Mirrors of Encounters 