GREAT NEWS

In the morning, when you leave the land of dreams, you open your eyes to a view of the room that you fell asleep in.  The light may have changed but every detail of the room and its contents, and its inhabitants, including you and your body, is exactly as you expect it to be.  None of this is worth a second thought, or any thought at all, for that matter.  It is time to get on with the new day.  And so, you do.

As far as you can tell, the world that you live in exists independently of you.  It was there long before you were born and it will continue, unchanged, after you are gone.  You can pay attention to it or not.  It doesn’t matter to anyone but you.  Reality goes on.  It has nothing to do with you.  It is completely impersonal and it’s the same for everybody.  That is why we call it “objective reality”.

We need to learn to cope with it if we are to have any hope of surviving, let alone thriving.

We are subject to reality. You could say that we are consumers of it.  Our relationship to reality is a one-way street.  While we are subject to reality, reality is not subject to us.  That’s just the way it is.  We think that any other way to think about it is delusional.

For a long time, going back five to seven thousand years, some deep thinkers began to realize that the world that we know is not the ultimate realty.  They began to sense a subtler reality beneath the world of appearances.  They talked about and wrote about it but their claims fell mainly on deaf ears.  From time to time, great teachers were born who claimed to see a deeper reality and even performed “miracles” based upon their knowledge of it.  Some of these teachings were cocooned in layers of non-comprehension and became the source of religions.  Religions, being matters of “faith” or “belief” tend to be cataloged with superstition in the modern mind.  Only a small minority of humans have taken these teachings seriously as reality.  The rest of us stay on the surface of appearances and struggle to cope.

Starting in the early part of the last century, our view of reality began to be challenged by new discoveries in Physics.  Delving into the nature of atoms, physicists discovered that the solid reality that we perceived consisted mainly of empty space.  They visualized the atom as a miniature solar system with subatomic particles orbiting the nucleus of the atom like planets orbiting the sun.  As they looked closer, they discovered that the particles they were studying were most likely bundles of energy, whatever that is.  And, these bundles of energy sometimes acted like particles and sometimes acted like waves, depending on whether they were being observed.

As far as we humans could tell, based on our deepest study, the world that we live in exists solely in our perceptions.  The reality inside it is completely different and not directly knowable by us.  Now, the Hindu idea that the world that we perceive is “maya”, the Sanskrit word for illusion, began to seem less far-fetched.

Another train of inquiry in science has been in brain research.  The accepted idea has been that humans developed consciousness as our brains evolved and that our minds are a function of our brains.  This fit the view that humans are animals that have developed consciousness and are the only creatures that are conscious of being conscious.

New tools like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machines have allowed researchers to closely observe the electrical activity of the brain in real time.  In this way, we have been able to learn what areas of the brain become active when we have particular thoughts or experiences.  We have become much more knowledgeable about how the brain works.  Still, intimate study of brain activity has not yielded any idea about where thoughts originate in the first place. 

The study of perception has not yielded any idea of how the stimulation of our sensors of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell can possibly deliver the experience of the magnificent, fine grained, sensually rich, totally immersive world that we live in.  The mystery of how we can convert nerve impulses from our contact with the sea of patterned energy, that Physics has found to be all that is, has not been solved.  In fact, the question has not been posed in the minds of most scientists.

While it is undeniable that we are conscious and that we are conscious that we are conscious, science has not provided any explanation of the source of our consciousness.  The assumption that consciousness somehow emerged from higher brain functioning in the newest part of the human brain, the cerebral cortex, is common.  No tenable argument to support this belief has been put forward.

The “hard problem of consciousness” is only a hard problem if one accepts the assumptions of a science based on the presumption that reality is physical in nature and that all truths can only be based on physical principles.  This is a curious position when one considers the finding of physics that the physical world that we perceive does not represent the underlying facts of existence.  In other words, the solid world that we experience does not exist as a physical fact.  It exists and is real only in our individual perceptions and is entirely subjective.

If we were to turn our assumptions about physicality and consciousness on their heads, we could easily solve the hard problem of consciousness and gain a fresh view of cosmology, evolution and history.  If we assume that consciousness is the beginning, bedrock and source of all that is and that the big bang and all that is issuing from it is an idea in eternal consciousness, the world makes a lot more sense.  In other words, the physical universe and all that it contains is a manifestation of thought.  Matter is frozen consciousness like a splash of water instantly turned to ice in midair.

If the universe is not merely an accidental or random explosion of dumb matter but, rather, the exuberant flowering of intention, what does that make us?  Instead of an accidental fluke of nature, a self-conscious animal on an obscure planet in an incomprehensibly huge cosmos, who are we?

Could it be that we are conscious beings in a conscious universe?  Could it be that we are made of the same stuff that that the universe is made of, which is consciousness?  Could it be that our minds are local facets of the universal mind?  Could it be that we share in the attributes of the conscious, creative, expanding universe?  These conjectures need to be tested in our own experience.

If the universe is a thought in the process of manifesting itself and if we humans have the ability to generate thoughts, do we also have the power to manifest the things that we imagine?  There are mountains of evidence that we do have that power to manifest “physical” realities and that we have always had that.  We are doing it now but, mostly, we are unaware of it.  Instead, we accept our world at face value and deny having any role in creating it. We are content to be consumers of reality rather than creators of it.

The human brain is the most complex structure in the known universe.  It is programmed by the system of beliefs that we have acquired throughout life.  Then, based upon constant streams of sensory inputs from our bodies, it filters the massive amounts of data it receives and creates an interpretation that we consciously perceive.  We call this interpretation “reality” or “the world” or “my life” or “now”.  Notice that our brain creates what we are perceiving as reality.  It creates our individual universe.  In that sense, with the help of our brains and, based on our thoughts, we are making it all up.  Each moment of each day of each life is a work of creative genius.

The programming of our brain begins in the womb and continues throughout life.  Up until about age six we are totally receptive to any influences in our environment that give us information about what life is like and how we should react to our experiences.  These influences are mainly other people and we learn to mirror their ideas and behaviors uncritically.  We do not begin to develop enough sense of self to begin to filter those inputs until that time so the contents of our subconscious mind are mainly the product of other people’s ideas.  The subconscious mind works like a tape player.  When a particular kind of experience is encountered, the relevant tape is played back.  That tape is the program that the brain uses to mold sensory inputs into the reality that we experience.  While it is possible to replace these programs that reside in the subconscious mind, it requires persistence.  We do it often throughout life as we learn, grow and develop new habits.  We can change our programming consciously if we choose to and are willing to devote the necessary effort to the process.

We could call these brain programs our beliefs.  Our beliefs determine what our world is like.  If we carry the belief that we at the mercy of chance events or of other people then our life experience bears this out.  If we carry the belief that we determine the quality of our own life and that we are not subject to the intrusion of chance events or of other people, then we won’t be.  This is important because it highlights an essential principle:  No sovereign, divine being can impinge upon the life of any other sovereign, divine being without agreement between the two.  Nothing can come into your life unless you invite it in through your beliefs.  This is the basis of your security on the planet.

The essential self that we really are is always present, running in the background.  It is the “me” that is reading this.  It is the witness to my every thought, feeling or action.  It is the source of every new idea.  It is the source of loving thoughts, empathy and compassion.  It is the thread that holds my life together.

You have a body but you are not your body, as much as you may identify with it and think that it is you. Your body is the physical vehicle of your essential self.  You are the consciousness behind your body.  You are the driver.  Your body is the car.

Your physical self, the body/mind that you have incarnated into, your vehicle, includes an operating system.  That operating system is the software that we call “psychology”. Psychology controls behavior.  A major segment of our operating system is a very useful program that we have come to call “ego”.  It is the ego’s job to protect and preserve our physical body and to provide for its wellbeing.  The ego is the seat of the idea that we are our body and nothing else.

In the course of doing its job, this body self, false self or ego that we all have is the source of fears and all of the cascade of negative feelings and ideas that come from fear.  Anger, envy, jealousy and hatred are its spawn.  When we are feeling any of these, we are in the grip of ego and the bogus idea that it is the real me and that I should base my behavior on its promptings.

Wise humans have been parsing the deep truths of human life for a very long time.  We live in an exciting age where the brilliant tool of science is beginning to validate the insights of our most advanced thinkers.  Statements that were couched in spiritual terms and formerly thought to be fanciful, poetic evocations of wishful “truths” are beginning to be seen as accurate descriptions of the deep nature of reality.  While these statements have always been accurate and accessible to initiates through arcane disciplines, they have not been comprehensible to rationalist/materialistic thinkers until recently.  Science, the quintessential rationalist/materialist mode of inquiry, is providing the bridge for our comprehension of this wisdom.  The reason for plumbing the depths of this deep knowledge is that it indicates to us the principles of consciousness upon which a successful, fulfilling life can be built.  We can understand what works and why it works and have the option of creating the life of our choice.  In doing that, as seemingly isolated individuals, we each contribute to the positive evolution of consciousness and to the expansion of the universe.  This is an automatic byproduct of our selfish urge for a life of greater fulfillment.  What is good for one is good for all.

I have been drawing a very simple cartoon of what I have come to believe is the truth of human life. I have spent my time on the planet collecting the bits of evidence that have allowed me to reach these conclusions.  Everything that I say here is subject to revision based on further learning.  This theory is a work in progress as I am and we all are.  This is what I believe to be true today.

I will summarize the good news:

          You are an eternal being, a self-aware off-shoot of all-that-is.

          You have chosen to incarnate on planet Earth and to be part of nature.

          You create your experience of living with your thoughts.

          Your thoughts and desires contribute to the evolution of consciousness.

This is my advice to you:

Find the stillness that lies within you every day and spend some time there.

Notice what you like in your life and say, thank you.  You will get more things like it.

Take your attention away from things you don’t like.  You will get fewer things like them.

Choose the best feeling thoughts that you can find and think them as often as possible.

Notice your emotions.  Good feelings tell you that your current thought is good for you.  Bad feelings tell you that your current thought is bad for you.  Then, let them go.

Be kind and loving to yourself.  You will tend to be kind and loving to everyone else.

Dream up the best life for yourself that you can imagine in as much detail as you can manage.  Especially, feel what it will feel like to live that life.  Decide to have it and put energy into getting it every day.  Then, let it go and trust that it is on its way.

Share what you learn with other people.  The more you give, the more you get.

Remember that your life is your life.  You are making it all up.  It is your unique work of art and it doesn’t have to fit into anyone else’s unless you say it does.

There is only one of us here, in spite of appearances.  What is good for one is good for all. 

What is bad for one is bad for all.

The greatest gift that you can give is to be your own, authentic self.  That’s what you are here for.

Have fun.