The Plowman’s Furrow: The Spiritual

.Intellectuality in our age is so esteemed that other attributes of human life are often relegated to the background. The success in one’s life, socially, economically, and politically, through the utilization of one’s intellectual gifts is not contestable. Institutions of learning, schools, and universities be they scientific, technical, artistic, or ecclesiastical, introduce and reinforce value systems which often exclude the relationships human beings have with each other. Learning institutions are not to be blamed since one cannot be taught love, empathy, integrity, or compassion. The spiritual dimensions of one’s life cannot be taught.

One cannot approach spirituality but with great reserve, uncertainty and often disbelief when one views the multitude of nonsensical claims and exercises of a most primitive nature, up to the many religious sects and doctrines embraced by well-meaning practitioners.

The witch doctor, the guru, the rabbi, the clergyman, set up the stage. They preach to their followers, “some individuals get to ‘heaven’ after they die, and some individuals don’t, and I will tell you how to get there, what to do, and how to be.” Accepting this, the individual follows the leader and ceases one’s own search.

Should one follow religious leaders who profess to know the way to salvation? Should one follow the atheists who deny their idea of God? Should one follow the goodniks who believe they will get a prize for being good? Should one follow the millionaires who believe their god is making them rich and comfortable?

One asks oneself if spiritual attributes are simply a moral exercise to achieve heavenly bliss, just as intellectual exercises enable one to obtain material satisfaction. Or, is spirituality simply the opposite to materiality (if you can kick it, it is real, but if you cannot touch it or see it, it is spiritual). To frame the investigation of spirituality in this manner is a trip down a blind alley.

Spirituality is not a phenomenon which can be described by the intellect and adopted by those seeking security. Spirituality is a true force in everyday life. Without it, life is simply robotic intellectualism.

The sources of the greatest problems in society are pride (the exaltation of one’s ego complex) and greed (the acquisition of things for  ones’self) . Both stem from the mistaken self-image of that of an isolated individual in competition with other isolated individuals. Exercising one’s acquisitive nature effectively requires the use of power and a lack of empathy. It is very difficult for the individual to reflect on the possibility that the value of relationship transcends the concept of one’s self and one’s self pursuits. Coping with the environment, pursuing a career, raising a family, and still embracing a spiritual dimension in one’s life is no small challenge.

The spiritual life is not a route to obtain “pie in the sky when you die.” Life is relationships. There is nothing of an acquisitive nature in good relationships. The attributes of spirituality, love, empathy, integrity, and compassion are existential in nature and do not lead to something else. Accepting a spiritual dimension in one’s life is the recognition that no outside source can show one what to do, or what to seek, or how to be.

If one refuses to look inside oneself in the investigation of the spiritual, one is lost, because no outside source can do it for one. In looking inside oneself, one finds one is not a conditioned isolated ego. One does not find a dichotomy between the spiritual and the material. One finds that one is not alone and that all humanity is imbued by spiritual attributes. There is no question of arriving at some spiritual place, but rather recognizing the common spiritual values in relationships between each other. The force of spirituality is love. It is the milieu of the spiritual and is alive and well in many who walk this earth.

When one looks inside oneself, what one sees is who one is. There are not two, an observer and an observed. If one finds some person, some book, some ritual that one is dependent upon, one has not found oneself or the truth of relationships, spiritual value and the limitlessness of love and freedom.

Because the senses tell us we are individual people, we conclude that we have individual souls and we build a mythological journey for this soul. We ignore our real role of engagement in the dynamics of peaceful, loving humanity, and tell ourselves that the chaos will be resolved for us after our death when our soul goes to heaven. The belief that one has a soul in one’s body, and that at death the soul drifts off to a heavenly place, deters one from an inner journey, looking inside, taking responsibility for a personal quest. Upon exploring inner space, the ego loses its security and becomes frightened without its tools of greed and pride and the safeguards of its culture.

Everlasting life is not going to be some sort of surprise gift for the ego. When one acts completely unselfishly, one is not on one’s way to heaven. One is in it. Heaven is not a future reward for someone acting unselfishly. That is what heaven is – love. Heaven and love are here/now, not some goal one is in progress towards.

Control, attachment, and possession are no part of love, no part of heaven. Letting every speck of hatred out of one’s heart is not a movement towards some goal. You have found yourself. You are not going anywhere. You are there. You are not going somewhere else. Eternity doesn’t “begin” for you, it is ever-present. Death belongs to the cyclical. Death has lost its sting. You find love, you lose your self. One doesn’t love with one’s brain. The ego never was a generator of love.

This has been a short chapter on spirituality, because, in fact, spirituality cannot be explained. One must find it for oneself. It is not an intellectual pursuit, but the breadth and depth of love.

The Plowman’s Furrow: A Human Perspective

For one reason or other, or a combination of many, the various animal species become extinct. Life blooms and fades. The mystery of its temporal survival on life’s stage remains just that, a mystery. One observes the many patterns and organizational skills exhibited by the multitude of species, each furthering its maintenance and survival. Although often explained biologically or environmentally, one is impressed by the individual ants building their anthill, by the migration of the geese and the butterfly, by the bees and their honeycomb, etc. Call it instinct or the unknowable, but the intelligent human being seeks an answer to the patterns observed and to the activities characteristic of one’s own species.

Human beings find themselves in this same cycle. One observes that the human is endowed with the tools to continue the physical cycle of the human species. The human being adapts to the chaos within its species and seeks security for one’s self, family, and friends. While finding it easy to believe in the permanency of death for the individual ant, goose, butterfly, and bee, within the continuance of its own species, man tends to deny the permanence of his own death while the human species continues on its cyclical existence.

To be involved in the cyclical world phenomenon and yet embrace the elements true to the family, remains the human family’s challenge. The human family is composed of all the families of the world, and each family is a part of it. One must be both the tree and the forest, and able to see the near and the far.

Politics has turned the world upside down. The driving force of the human family, peace, mercy, kindness, and caring, has become secondary to power, wealth, greed, and pride. It has become difficult to recognize true togetherness, and not become simply robotic, intellectual individuals seeking security. The age of intellectualism has arrived with its compartmentalization, industrial machinery, usefulness and profit. One tends to ignore the whole relational event involving person, family unit, and the world family of humankind.

To go very far one must begin with the very near. One must consider how one fits into one’s own family, recognizing insensitivity, insecurity, attachments, biases, and one’s love, caring, and kindness in family life. One appreciates the expansion of good family values directed towards races and nations. The cyclical journey is an interesting one. Its beauty is revealed when one finds oneself, the infinite dimensions of one’s being. To see and be involved in the near and the far is the human perspective, or as some may say, “to walk and chew gum at the same time.”

And now I am putting on my shoes, tying up the laces and going for a walk. One might say, “I hope he takes a package of gum with him,” or perhaps, “he’s one individual in the cyclical flow of humanity.”

In this cyclical world, the marvel and majesty of death is as beautiful as the marvel of birth. They are the bookends of one’s life in the cyclical world. Death is neither the self’s escape from misery nor the pursuit for personal happiness. It is not qualified by thought or memory. It is somewhat similar to birth.

The Plowman’s Furrow: The True

Life experienced as a balance between active involvement in a dynamic world (the daily activities of every human being), and that of a fellowship, a relationship with fellow man whose  quality of life is the love of neighbour, empathy, compassion, and unselfishness, is no small balancing act. A dichotomy would seem to exist between what one does (all measured in progress or its lack), and who one is (one’s living relationships).

The focus on the previous chapter was life after death and the illusion that one’s active involvement in the cyclical world of a temporal nature, would in some way lead to eternal bliss. Earlier, one’s attention was directed to the meditative experience, not being a withdrawal and introverted experience, but an active awakening, recognizing the true as the true, the false as the false, and the true in the false. Only such an awakening opens the door for considerations other than the temporal, and investigation of what is true in life’s relationships.

Establishing right relationships requires a recognition of the conditioning milieu in which one lives. Tribal, familial, racial, religions, economic, political and national conditions all breed particular value systems. The resulting cultures are not ideologies. They are the living experiences of all human beings. One’s perceptions and actions are coloured by the myriad conditioning factors, giving rise to bias, prejudice, division, and violence.

To arrive at the true means abandoning one’s conditioning. To abandon one’s conditioning one must first recognize it. Abandoning one’s conditioning is both shocking and liberating. Shocking because with the recognition of unconscious traits of dependency, acquisition, attachment, one still lives in a world of competition, injustice, violence, and one feels alienated within one’s culture. Liberating because the limits imposed upon one’s viewpoints and perceptions no longer stereotype one’s being and one’s relationships.

Viewing reality from a conditioned vantage point prevents one from freely experiencing the true.

Freedom is absolutely necessary for the investigation of the true. Freedom is the lack of being controlled by conditioning factors. Political doctrines that advocate freedom focus on the rights of individuals living among other individuals to maintain peace and order within a social system. Such freedom contains within itself the constraints of conditioning factors, be they cultural, racial, economic, or national.

True freedom is not freedom from some form of suppression. True freedom is an action which is not tainted by conditioning. Freedom is a state of being, not a license to satisfy one’s ego desires or one’s national philosophy, just as love is a state of being, not simply sentiment and attachment.

Science expands our sense of freedom, enlarging our vision, shooting rockets into outer space, exploring the vastness of the universe. Much less effort is expended in investigating one’s freedom as a quality of life which enables an unfettered perception of the true. Such an inner journey encounters attachments which threaten the ego’s security, limiting one’s investigation.

Lawyers exercise their profession in the realm of words. They argue over which words are true and which words are false, in the trying of their cases. The word is a valuable communication vehicle, but it is not the reality, the true. The word is not the thing. The true is not simply the opposite of the false. The true is not a phenomenon grasped by the intellect. The true is that which exists. The true, like love, is not a temporal phenomenon and does not become greater or lesser in time.

Once again one’s attention is directed to the meditative experience. It is not a withdrawal and introverted procedure. It is an active awakening recognizing the true. This perception of the true is instantaneous, while the verbalization of the experiences takes time. This perceptual awareness of the true exists in the abandonment of one’s conditioning. The true exists in all its reality, concurrent with the ego progressively coping with the temporal experiences within a short life span.

True love, eternity, remain a mystery thankfully beyond intellectual pursuits.

A true vision of reality is not the vision of an isolated spectator. Consciousness contains the thought content of the ages and the thought content of the present. This milieu of consciousness, common to all people, is contaminated by condition factors, be they religious, racial, familial, or political. A revolution of consciousness is not simply a revolution of “my” consciousness, but a revolution of the consciousness of humankind.

Ego identity, derived from experience and value systems, claimed consciousness as its own. True relationship transcends ego identity and individual relationship. True relationship is more precious and more difficult (influenced by one’s conditioning). False relationships are the relations of the images we have with each other. Actual relationships with each other are more precious that who you think you are. Difficult to feel and to believe that relationships devoid of images are real relationships. Only then can one realize the depth and range of being, where one is not isolated from another.

The consciousness of mankind is divided and conflictual. The true is hidden by the divisive conditioning patterns of humanity. The true is freedom, unaffected by conditioning.

The Plowman’s Furrow: Death

Throughout history, the various cultures of the world give evidence through oral and documented traditions of a character trait common to all, namely a fundamental belief in a life after death.

Witch doctors, gurus, rabbis, priests, radio evangelists, theologians, and organized religions all advocate methods to attain this life after death.

The present technological age, where information is at the tip of one’s fingers, has given birth to an expansion of consciousness and diminishing influence of organized religions and self-appointed ambassadors of a particular deity. The debunking of literal interpretations of old myths, scientific advancement, astronomical discoveries, social media, rapid information exchange, although enlightening, threaten the reality of true spirituality. Is there a life after death, becomes the common thread in the dubious minds of contemporary human beings.

The post from a few weeks ago, titled Persona, directed one’s attention to the mind’s ability to form a concept of self, the ego, the life-flow of an individual from birth to death. The individual, as part of the cyclical world, utilizes the tools of thought: concepts, abstraction, generalizations, and causal relations to cope within the cycle. The individual commits to the value systems engendered within the cyclical system in all aspects of daily life. Throughout history, seeking life after death was the mind’s search to cross from the temporal, cyclical state to a non-temporal, non-cyclical state.

There is no intellectual bridge available to individuals to bridge their temporal condition to that of life beyond temporality. The faculty of thought itself is temporal. Thought is useful, but it is always about yesterday and tomorrow.

The thought that eternity is a succession of time elements, and that infinity is a succession of space elements, and that the ego is an individualized entity, blocks any consideration other than the temporal. The ego imagines a life after death to be characterized by a transformed continuance of one’s present state.

At death, the individual persona, brain activity, and ego consciousness cease. There remains no reflective brain activity, no temporal measuring, no comparing, feeling, or thinking. The mind and the senses belonged to the cyclical.

Eternal life is not arrived at through the ideological and theocratic thought process of egotized humanity. Eternal life is new, unexplainable.

What is the relationship between the cyclical (that which has a beginning and an end, repeated over and over again), and that which has no end? One must recognize the error in posing such a question. It is like asking, “how many oranges make an apple?” There is no relationship between the temporal and the timeless. One has the idea that everything has a beginning and that it follows logically that everything has an end, not recognizing that beginning and end are the cyclical experience. Eternity is beyond any conceptual effort of thought. Egos, the mental structure of the mind, come and go. Eternity has no beginning and no end.

Thought is a precious faculty in the lives of all humans. The reader might well say at this point, “if life after death is beyond the realm of thought, it is useless to pursue any further.”

The statement that no effort of thought will lead one to a timeless life after death is not an effort to disparage thought. It is just that one finds it difficult to accept a viewpoint other than the rational, logical process so necessary in daily life. A perspective that is beyond the tools of thought is one other than that experienced by the intellectually formed ego. Man has been considering life after death from the wrong frame of reference.

Progress is a movement towards a goal devised by the intellect. It is temporal. It is useful. It can be measured and tested.

The relationship of empathy, compassion, and love are not useful, not temporal (increasing or decreasing), not driven towards some end. They are unselfish, i.e. not related to ego goals.

These two perspectives, progress and relationship, do not nullify one another, but there is a vital difference. Compassion, empathy, and love do not have progressive temporal drives. They are not measurable. The pragmatist is apt to say now, “what? You believe that love is as real as progress? Love is simply an emotion.”

Our culture, our intellectual pursuits, our technological successes become for many the bubble in which one lives. Life’s goals become growth in learning, understanding, and knowledge, and their use in providing creature comfort, cooperation and competition within one’s culture.

No one denies the progress of events (some of which contribute to health and welfare). Many events described as progress are short-lived and detrimental. All are temporal in nature.

As viewed by psychologists, psychiatrists, and analysts, our growing experiences are time-specific, and interpreted as progress from one stage to another; trauma being the result of fixation at any stage, normality being successful adaptation throughout growth and development.

Life is an existential activity, whatever one’s stage may be in terms of growth, and involves complex relationships. Each stage of growth and development reveals a value system typical of the particular experience.

The experiences of compassion, empathy, and love are the very activity which distinguishes man from the robot and artificial intelligence. These are not ephemeral emotions emanating from an individual persona. They are real relationships. They do not stem from ego drives. They are void of a reflective (for me) mental process.

One’s persona is not something designed by God to test one and give one a reward after death. The persona is designed by the human mind and is temporal, in time, a tool for survival in a cyclical world. The persona, the ego, is that tool enabling acceptance or rejection of true love over self-love. It is the open door for life after death.

The Plowman’s Furrow: A Small Error…

The myth of Adam and Eve describes the creation of the first man. Not only was woman created last, but she was created from Adam’s rib. Any literal interpretation of this text is certainly beyond even the simplest of minds. However, to believe that woman was created just to keep man company, being simply his humanized rib, suggests a somewhat inferior role for the female sex. It implies the superiority and dominance of the male.

A small error, in the beginning, leads to subsequent immense consequences.

One observes that throughout history and up to the present day, in many countries, women are required to be obedient to their male counterpart, with no protection by state laws or religious entities. In the more developed cultures, one observes continually lesser roles for women in all aspects of life: socio-economic, ecclesiastical, and political. It has been and still is, a long and hard journey for females to be successful in combating this error.

With the emerging expansion of human consciousness, the interaction of social media and immediate access to information, the harmful effects of age-old myths are being mitigated. “Common sense” socially accepted inequalities are brought to the light of day.

Another occasion of a small error in the beginning, leading to tragic consequences in the end, is the following: during World War II, the American and Canadian soldiers, many of whom sacrificed their lives, liberated the Italian people from the control of the fascist dictator Mussolini.

After the war, the dictatorial rule of fascists and Nazis no longer prevailed, and the possibility of a rising dictatorial regime was considered to be eliminated. The world ignored the fact that continual inequality and prejudice would breed a blind desire for change in growing masses experiencing injustice, even in the most democratic of nations.

A small error, in the beginning, leads to subsequent tragic consequences.

During the following years after World War II, the division between the haves and the have-nots has widened. Politics degenerated into power and control to maintain the status-quo. The doors opened for a leader to utilize the malcontent of many, promising prosperity, catering to the most insecure and angry of the population, and with no regard for factual truth. The emerging dictator would justify racial, religious and political violence as a tool for control and power. Masses of people are hood-winked into this fascist mentality.

American and Canadian soldiers of World War II, if living today, would feel that their sacrifices were in vain.

A dictator gets away with dirty, aggressive postures that his followers admire, and who remain blind to his persona. The self-delusion of his own persona is projected onto the angry masses, uninformed sycophants, and politicians seeking their own ends.

Some of the well-known characteristics of an emerging dictator are the following:

• A regression to protectionism and radical nationalism, resulting in trade wars and anti-immigration policies.
• The attaining of absolute power. “Obedience” to the leader disguised as “loyalty.”
• Attack on the free press, enabling one’s power and control to become unchallenged. “What is true is what I say.”
• Assault on the legal system, democratic institutions and the rule of law.
• Incarceration for critics of his policies.
• Paranoia regarding the international communication of embassies. Elimination of staff and reduction of embassies.
• Delusional self-image: “I alone can solve your problems.’
• Egoism and alienation. For example, signing documents with large, black strokes overshadowing the content of the printed materials, slandering opponents, etc.
• The consistent adherence to internal reference points and neglect or disdain toward external reference points – a narcissism sadly incapable of empathy, impeding constructive negotiations with other nations.
• Lies, distortions of the truth, and presenting events taken out of context.

After World War II, up to the present, the success of liberation had been taken for granted. The condoning of the abuse of that liberty has spawned the emergence of a Mussolini-type figure.

A benevolent dictator is hard to come by. The isolated popularism in a pluralistic nation with established, somewhat effective institutional structures, in spite of their short-comings, ultimately ends in failure. The failure of a supreme scam-artist with a delusional self-image.

A small error, in the beginning, leads to major consequences in the end.

After the American Revolution, the inhabitants of the South felt extremely insecure, now subject to Northern dominance. The second amendment assured the defeated South that they could retain their muskets, thus to some degree alleviating their insecurity.

This insecurity developed into fear and finally paranoia, framed into, “the government is trying to take away our individual liberty, our right to bear arms,” by the NRA. The right to bear arms soon became the right to possess assault rifles and any number of guns (one might believe that soon this would include flame-throwers and hand grenades).

Accepting a few dollars from the NRA progressed into major contributions of millions of dollars until finally, political entities became hostage to the NRA.

The paranoia continues. Angry men who have a propensity for using guns to intimidate, punish, or kill, obviously have a problem with affection and loving, intimate relationships. They, through their fear and dependency, are obsessed with the need to control and lack the capability of appreciating the depth and magnitude of love.

To distract from the common sense reality that assault-rifle availability is a serious problem, gun lobbyists direct the public’s attention to the inadequacy of mental health facilities, which do need improvement. However, even if improved, the problem remains, since gun addicts and the paranoid will not seek psychiatric help. In short, anyone who wants an assault rifle shouldn’t have one.

The Plowman’s Furrow: Denial

When human beings do not accept the wholeness of their true identity, the most effective defense mechanism is brought to birth: denial.

Cultural, political, and religious influences tend to stereotype persons, societies, and nations. Value systems are accepted, rejected, and distorted – all affecting one’s perspectives, one’s relationships, one’s goals. Amid diverse, conflicting values, the process of denial thrives.

One uses denial in everyday activities and relationships, social, economic, political, and religious. The defence mechanism of denial is unconscious (conscious denial of fact is simply lying). As one is unaware of one’s denial, soon denial becomes “common sense” and enables one to blend into prevalent systems. One is then able to divorce oneself from such problems as ecological pollution, poverty and distribution of wealth, racial prejudices, etc. and direct one’s attention to the accumulation of wealth and security of self and those closest to one.

One asks oneself, “why can’t we just ignore the prejudices, divisiveness, chaos, and pursue what enjoyment we can during our short stay here?” But the world’s activities influence our lives, and we are part of the world’s activity. We are joined at the hip with humanity’s destiny. Our consciousness has expanded when we recognize this fact.

The surge of consciousness, the availability of knowledge, and social media interactions are a looming tragedy for sustained denial. Consciousness (i.e. absence of denial) has taken a gigantic leap. Racial, sexual, economic, and religious prejudices are seeing the light of day. They are no longer able to be sustained.

Personal and national denial stems from anxiety and insecurity, and give birth to the values of power, control, and wealth as solutions. One becomes afraid to ask oneself the right questions and hear the right answers.

Why is there so much poverty in the world? (Poverty is the suffering of children, the agony of parents trying to provide, the starvation and death of populations). When the answer is simply that poverty has to do with economic factors, supply and demand, international trade balances, and inept institutions, we have not listened to the question. The question was about greed and suffering. The answer involves a recognition of the acquisitive nature of our culture and our identification with it.

Solutions do not come about solely by institutional changes which address partial problems, many of which have a negative effect on other partial problems. Nor is a permanent change brought about by a revolution in the streets. The change will only come about by a revolution of consciousness, the recognition of one’s denial, and insight into one’s own perceived identity as an individualized autonomous entity and its accompanying divisiveness.

A revolution of consciousness directs the burden of change to a personal level away from authority figures and institutions. In lieu of projecting responsibility on to religious institutions and political system, one recognizes the degree of one’s denial. With this recognition, the false disappears and changes in one’s perception of reality take place.

The human being clings to a denial of the permanency of death. Good friends and family members have “passed on,” and the living treasure them in their hearts. Prayers are offered for deceased loved ones that they may enjoy the happiness of heaven. Saints are prayed to for their assistance in times of grief and troubles. One believes that family members and friends now exist after death as the persons once known. One grieves over their departure and one’s sense of loss.

Most people’s ideas about heaven are as a peaceful spot, more rationally perfect than this one. Heaven is filled with the newly born (perhaps even the fertilized egg) right up to the oldest deceased. There you will meet your friends and relatives.

That children are encouraged to believe this is a commendable measure of human compassion. Even as adults, we have a difficult time accepting that death is permanent. Our religious beliefs encourage us that we as Tom, Dick, and Harry, will carry on with some continuous life as Tom, Dick, and Harry.

For the young, active adults, life appears to be achieving the goals of one’s ego, and this idea is simply transferred to that transition from life to death – resurrection being the self-fulfilment of one’s ego alongside all the other self-fulfilled egos. We are struck with the idea that God is in the image of man, a perfectly rational being, in some way within the dimensions of time, space, and the logic of causality, and created this world of time, space, rational beings, ergo we’ll say “hello” to him/her/it upon our arrival. Individual souls are considered to be in progress towards reception by an individual God.

The relation between soul and persona, i.e. between soul and ego, has never been clear. Is the soul an individualized entity that soars off to meet other souls in a heaven? Are personas and souls the same entity? Organized religions project the idea that each ego has a personalized soul and that they have the key to its salvation. Sacred words, rites, rituals, and laws, if obeyed, assure the individual that death is not permanent. Each person will continue on by following the edicts of their particular religious system.

There is no doubt that humanity owes a great deal of gratitude for the influence of religious institutions in establishing schools, hospitals, in defence of the downtrodden and assistance to the poor and overlooked members of society. However, throughout history religions have been, and still are, among the most divisive elements of our society. There are myriad religious systems all eager to offer man “salvation.”

Religion is important for political systems. It is important for religious institutions and political systems both, to enable us an exercise of control and influence. Just as one views the soul/ego individually seeking its happiness, so also one views the nations individually seeking their autonomy and greatness. The resulting divisiveness is evident in both realms.

Religious efforts to ameliorate their divisiveness are made through ecumenism, legitimizing the variety of religious ways to receive one’s reward and eternal happiness from the one God. Ignoring both the conflicting religious ideology and its methods, each giving rise to diverse laws and rituals, ecumenism strives to maintain the relevance of religion in a chaotic world.

The strong resistance of individuals to the negation of one’s stereotypical ego identity and to a consciousness transcending that of ego-consciousness is understandable. To many, it is viewed as nihilism. However, kindred spirits have an inner awareness that they are one with each other with no loss of their non-reflective diversity.

It is likewise understandable that organized religions will react strongly to any negation of a personalized soul. It threatens the whole idea of their heaven. True religion is the recognition that “my” soul and “your” soul are not limited individual entities. Individual ghosts appearing through walls in a vague form is the fantasy of story-tellers.

The expanding consciousness of mankind and its assault on the process of denial is a truly liberating phenomenon.

The Plowman’s Furrow: Meditation

No amount of thoughtful scheming of determined willing will lead to a state of peace and happiness. Thought is a temporal process. Concepts are in Time. That which is the “now” of eternity has nothing to do with past and future.

Life independent of thought is a very scary thing for the thinker and its control.

A Zen kōan, “to stick a pin in the iron bull,” sounds like a ridiculous enigma, yet we do not find it ridiculous to seek eternal peace and happiness through the temporal mechanism of thought. The concepts of eternity as time that goes on and on and the concept of space as miles and miles of emptiness prevent human thought and ego consciousness from accepting a non-temporal reality.

There are many techniques and a variety of disciplines that offer a sense of peace and comfort in a dynamic world of conflicting values. Many from the perspective of an isolated ego with all its devices for attaining knowledge and adapting to life’s challenges. This involves a knowing subject and a known object. It is dualistic in form and useful in its nature.

The other is meditation. Meditation is not musing or ruminating, both of which are products of thought. True meditation is not a discursive process. In meditation, there is no activity of registering and retrieving, as in the reasoning process. There is no usefulness directed towards some goal. In meditation, there is no past and future concerns from an isolated ego. Meditation lacks any form of dualism. The attention to reality, seeing the true as true, the false as false, and the true in the false is a simple act in the “now.”

Meditation has nothing to do with changing your person to another kind of person. There are no efforts to elevate your thought-up personal ego. In meditation, there is a state of freedom from the movement of time (while one is adapting to present-day cultural, religious, political systems). This state of freedom and integrity has no defining edges by which the thought process may grasp and assume ownership. The thought process has its proper place in managing the practical aspects of daily living, scientific research and technical progress. The intellectual order within the cycle is not meditation.

With right order, the door to meditation is opened. Right order is not the order dictated by authority figures, police, teachers, gurus, or clergy. Right order is not simply laws that provide a means for the survival of the human species. Right order embraces compassion, caring, love, and freedom. Freedom is not the licence of individuals to do whatever they desire, nor is love the simple attraction towards each other. Freedom and love are devoid of compulsion and possession. With true integrity and the absence of inner conflict, the door to meditation opens.

Meditation is not reclusive introspection in solitude or a mystical experience for the few. It is true activity in daily life. It is not uncommon. There are many beautiful people in the world, professionals, non-professionals, adults, teens, children, poor and rich, whose daily lives are marked with unselfishness, caring, and integrity, i.e. who meditate. Binding oneself to a joy or hardship is stereotyping, adhering to ego identity. To let go is like being released from a body cast.

But no ego is not a state of nihilism. All activity goes on, but none of it adheres to a centre called ego. The ego is an intellectual vantage point, not identification with an event.

Memories often make it difficult to recognize the past as past. When one lives without identifying with the transpired, one is living in the present, and there is a realization that there is not necessarily an inner subject (ego) viewing an object. There is no reflective activity involved in the action when subject and object are one.

The ego keeps one’s face too close to the tree to see the forest. True artists and musicians see beyond the painting and the melody. Their works, whether scorned or admired by the pragmatist, shine a light on an inexpressible reality, while caught up in the limiting whirl of the cyclical.

Meditation perhaps should be referred to as an “awakening,” because the term meditation is now often used for a myriad of modern techniques for handling the stress and strain of daily living. Meditation transcends this perspective. Meditation is freedom from time.

True meditation is timeless. It is completely different from the ego’s perception of a cyclical world, and the ego’s goal-driven activities.

The Plowman’s Furrow: The Persona

Our perception of the world we live in is that of a cyclical world. We experience the same events and patterns repeated, and we recognize this repetition process. Things happen over and over again. The sun rises and sets; vegetation lives and dies in its seasonal existence; the units of humanity (man, woman, child) live and die, live and die. Each lifetime is within this cycle as part of humankind. During one individual’s short lifespan one uses, plans, enjoys, suffers, develops this perceived cyclical reality.

As a perceived autonomous, independent individual, the human mind develops the conceptual tools of time and space to assure itself of survival, in the understanding of its environment. No one denies the usefulness of the concepts of time and space and their practical importance. We all know what it is like to grow up – this movement from childhood to adulthood. Our living experiences enable us to pursue goals, both those born from our very nature and those delivered to us through family, education, environmental, cultural and religious systems.

In spite of such usefulness, time is not a thing in itself. It is a measurement of the happenings of outer space and relies on experiences, their intellectual registration and the recall of memory, past, present, and projected future.

In spite of such usefulness, space does not exist like a measurable block of nothingness, nor is it simply that which surrounds an object. Space is that which has no centre.

Measuring outer reality, space and its objects, relations between objects, velocities, effects and causes are the mind’s activity.

Little by little man has learned that the earth is not the centre of the universe. The cosmos, as we know it now, has no limiting edges in its enormity. The universe cannot be measured by seeking its ends. The very enormity of this “outer world” is not that of the aforementioned cyclical reality, measurable by an inner subject.

So also, man is learning that his perceived person, his ego is not a fixed, psychological or spiritual centre which views reality as a subject viewing an object. We are not simply individuals with a stream of thought and emotions coming and going, all identified with a central persona. Our “inner” reality appears to be more like the “outer’ world of the cosmos as theorized by Einstein – no fixed, still, centre point. The very enormity of our “inner” reality is not the cyclical reality of birth and death. True reality is beyond the measurement of cyclical phenomenon. “Inner” and “outer” reality is beyond the understanding of an individualized mental process.

The mind’s conceptual activity in using its tools to understand and manipulate cyclical, measurable reality, is projected on to inner reality. With its concepts of space and time, it constructs an inner object like the objects of outer space. It fills inner space as if it were a measurable reality. It fashions an ego from experience and memory and compares itself in terms of good, better, best. It considers itself a temporal reality with anxieties, hopes, fears about a yesterday and a tomorrow. It senses this reality.

This individualized self-image views reality from this hypothetical centre called ego, that “me” which one absolutely cherishes – a self that seeks happiness, temporal security, and well-being. From this centre point, the individual picks out pieces, both simple and complex, uses selective processes, isolating, comparing, accepting, rejecting – measuring “things” in “time” and “space.” Usefulness is identified as progress, and the ego plants its ideals as the source of its progress, neglecting or denying the extent of its own reality.

We are brain-washed. We cannot think of ourselves as other than a mental activity in a body, with accompanying emotions -an intellectual subject, a rational animal communicating with other rational animals. We are analytical and practical, adaptable to cultural and environmental circumstances.

Personal intelligence has its proper place and is essential in our daily lives. Intellectual ideologies, socio-political systems limit one’s being to that of a skin-encapsulated ego of a specific race, religion or nation, resulting in divisiveness and conflict. Peace, happiness, love, and integrity do not depend upon how intelligent one is, but rather in caring, respect and sensing the totality of one’s relationships. The limits of our individualized mental functioning become evident with the recognition that one is integrally related to all humanity. This results in the transformation of the value system imposed upon one, and an expansion of consciousness, resulting in changing perspectives in the living of one’s life.

The thoughtful mind is analogous to a fast-flowing river. The shoreline ripples are comparable to the reality taken in by the senses. The deep centre of the flowing river like the totality of consciousness and the unconscious knowledge of present experiences and the experience of ages. The thoughtful mind gathers this knowledge through the intellectual tools of time and memory, registering and retrieving past experience and uses this process for survival and comfort.

Thought is not a spiritual reality, thought is a materialistic, neurological, complex phenomenon. All thought is a continuation, sustaining or modifying recent or non-recent past. Thought is temporal by nature. Thought is limited by the amount of data it can register and retrieve. (Perhaps one should be aware of artificial intelligence).

In identifying with one’s stereotypical self-image, one feels oneself to be the source of one’s intelligence. One considers intelligence to be only the personal, logical, rational attribute of man. True intelligence transcends the human thought process. It is a quality of the universe, not its ultimate achievement in a human skull. There are many examples in nature of its activity – a tree dropping helicopter-like, ripe seeds from its branches, some of which take root and continue the species; the various defence mechanisms of organisms, their growth and seed production, etc. – all intelligent phenomenon devoid of ego. Intelligence is not simply the product of logical thinking. Intelligence exists in nature without a reflective centre and is essential for the survival of species in their cyclical existence.

If one’s self-concept remains that of an individualized entity, a skin-encapsulated ego, the concepts of space, time, distance, measurements and comparisons, are absolutes, and further investigation transcending this perspective would be an impossible chore. Viewing ourselves as individual entities whose freedom and survival are: “my personal rights among others just like me,” our journey becomes one of compliance or cooperation with others within a particular tribal, cultural, religious or political system passed on through the ages. This stereotypical self-image appears to be necessary in one’s struggle for peace and happiness among others. Daily, one finds oneself adapting to the demands one encounters. To the degree that we identify with those experiences, we are a people who live within the divisiveness of cultures, religions, nations, embracing the whole gamut of happiness and sorrow, seeking a permanent state of peace and happiness.

However, the activity of the isolated ego exists together with an awareness (conscious or unconscious), of one’s identity in sync with humanity and the dynamic universe.

The thought process, individual thinking, seeing oneself as an autonomous, independent self is analogous to a jigsaw puzzle piece believing it is an independent whole entity. The jigsaw piece does not recognize the relative nature of its self-perception. The jigsaw piece itself, disappears when fitted in and the whole picture reveals itself; the piece now one with the whole.

The perspective of human beings living in a cyclical world, using all one’s faculties for work, play, live, relating rationally, and experiencing the variety of emotions, is not incompatible with the perspective of being integral to all reality, attentive to one’s actions related to the whole. We are both a person viewing a reality which we feel is absolutely other than us, and we are that reality when subject and object are one. In spite of the need to use the perception of separateness (duality) so that an individual may survive for a time, in a cyclical world, there is no existent duality.

From the point of view of the ego, the cyclical world is very real. From a (w)holistic viewpoint, subject and object are one. Unfortunately, when one proposes that subject and object are one, the rational thinker, the common-sense man, the successful pragmatist, the intellectual, issue an “anathema sit.”

In spite of this view, claiming one’s identity to be simply individualized freedom, personal identity with clan, state or nation, is of a limiting nature. Nationalism itself appears to be glorified tribalism. When Einstein referred to nationalism as a disease, that did not mean that Einstein was an anarchist. Just as he believed in relativity, the diversity of a cosmos with no fixed, static centre, so did he believe in mankind, the beauty of its diversity and the grace of order. There are no more limits on humanity that there are in the cosmos. Eternal reality is timeless with neither source nor goal. There is not something out there waiting for you. Stop chasing your own tail. As a very wise old man once said to me, “be quiet ‘til we see who you are.”

When subject and object are one, there is no intellectual process involved. Thought can express what has been and what will be, but it has no role in describing an existent state, the so-called “now.” The thought process is temporal. Reality, as perceived from the vantage point of ego, is a cyclical phenomenon, a temporal transition from life to death. There is no cyclical transitional reality moving at whatever rate into a timeless state. The cyclical character of the natural order remains an order of temporality.

There exists the false belief that life cannot survive without ego defences, without a controlling centre. To respond to temporal demands in a non-egotistical manner is like discussing oranges in terms of apples. Life transcends the ego. The non-temporal reality is a “now” not related to past and future. It is often referred to as eternity.

The Plowman’s Furrow

The Voice of the Plowman has been a place to share thoughts and ideas of life’s journey with others. The last post published was around the end of 2016.

After sharing that post, I thought that might be all, but ideas shared in The Voice of the Plowman seemed to grow even as I took a break from jotting my musings down.

The previous writings have led to The Plowman’s Furrow, a collection of eight chapters exploring The Persona, Meditation, Denial, A Small Error in the Beginning…, Death, The True, The Human Perspective, and The Spiritual.

I’ll publish each of those chapters here on The Voice of the Plowman over the coming weeks and months. Keep an eye out every two weeks for a new post. I look forward to sharing them with you.

Lloyd

Inner Space, Outer Space

I don’t know when
The implosion took place.
Long before the A-Bomb
shattered all space.