Forget what is, was, could or should be

Forget what is, was, could or should be. There are great philosophies and science is in progress. Lie down. Be dead.

Lying with your skeleton as it would be if only for gravity and with no resistance from muscle or tissue, die away peacefully to the emptiness. In as great a contrast now as possible to your dead body and mind the universe produces infinite power, deafening noise, blinding light. What is this? No science, no philosophising, no naming.

And untold number of storylines may be given for what is but none true. We can fool ourselves that there are stories that explain, nearly explain, or will just about do but we have no real and true storyline  Any story and the constituent language is human. Even the most mystical, even the most mathematical, can only paint a limited tale.

Empty of thoughts, all you have is thoughts. In the greatest stillness, there is nothing but movement. - - So this movement, in mind, in universe, in energy, in body, in life is it. Unexplained from this corpse like pose. This is.

This is the peace, the perfection, what you were missing, what you were seeking, what you were looking for but in so doing were blind to. Imperfectable.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Enlightenment demystified

Perhaps, rather than planning your escape, or dreaming of the release - instead describe and clearly map your prison.

When, by such inspection, it is seen that there is no prison - the natural, preexisting freedom, will become apparent.

What we seek in seeking is arrived at by one means and one means only. Not seeking.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

A cartoon on enlightenment.

1) (Normal person, getting on with life. Walking through a park, care free, whistling. Bird flying out from near by tree).

2) (Person continues walking) (Appearing in shot - A 'Guru' sitting) "You know there is a way called the enlightened way" says the Guru.

"What does that mean?" asks the person.

3) (person, now standing near the sitting Guru). Guru says "It means that you are asleep, you are in bondage - I am enlightened"

4) (person now sitting, book in hand) Thinks - "It seems I must now look hard and work to become enlightened too. Now I know I'm a separate, unawakened being - I have to get there."

5) (time has passed, person now has beard)

6) (Normal person, getting on with life. Walking through a park (with beard), care free, whistling. Bird flying out from near by tree). "Finally I'm free from this quest for enlightenment - I'm awakened!"

7) (Person continues walking) (Appearing in shot - A 'Guru' sitting) "You know there is a way called the enlightened way" says the Guru.

"Yes, thanks" (continues walking)

8) (and walking...)

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

How to align with Tao or become enlightened

How many people in the world are looking to align with Tao? Not so many but enough for an industry. How many people seek an awakening or spiritual enlightenment? Quite a large number, enough for a multi million dollar industry. How many people are looking to be right with God? Millions. Enough for a billion dollar industry.

To align with Tao. To become enlightened. To be right in God's eyes are different enough but the same in a way. A mind made transformation in a time other than now.

One can not be wrong with God, unenlightened or out of line with Tao. Perhaps the works of man in the name of God are most demanding when they say "all is God's way but man chooses to do right or wrong" but if, to save lengthy debate, we say that this also is God's way then we can move forward to the marrow.

The three cases I've raised are a human journey of the mind.

For the sake of my typing, your reading and the blog I'm speaking on I'll now speak of Tao and perhaps enlightenment (as Zen is so commonly spoken of alongside Tao). When I say though that one can not be out of line with Tao, unenlightened or so on, I will be equally and as correctly referring to God, Allah, spirit, nature, the ocean of being, or any other name for the absolute.

The absolute, the all, the everything, in most people's eyes includes them. In truth though there is no 'it and them' but 'it' only. You're it. One can only convince themselves that they are apart or separate by the use of the mischievous mind.

The mind, on hearing of enlightenment or Tao, creates a split. It then sets about trying to resolve the split. Alike to the quest for selflessness which is an entirely selfish act so too the quest for aligning or becoming exist also. As with all tricks on the mind from anxiety to stress, from fear to remorse, they exist in a time other than now. That is, they don't exist, except in the mind.

What is aimed for in the future that can already be nothing but the case already. Our example being: aiming for awakening tomorrow when it can only be the case now - these are insoluble mind tricks. These are the tricks that the million and billion dollar industries play off, are fueled by.

It was already the case before your birth that nature, the universe, Tao was one. At birth, also one. In times of mind made turmoil, also one. Death and after, also one. The mere concept of there being something to get right with produces the seed of separation.

We can not be blamed though. (Why we should be blamed at all is a joke to me but seems it must be addressed.) - long before humans were here, nature had come to have self and other. Even by close example our ape cousins or beloved pets have self and other in their nature. We though, we named and labeled. We took names, labels and concepts to have concrete reality. Years later in our history this ingrained trait is want for abuse as it runs wild unchecked.

The nature of how we can be fooled into taking labels for forms and also labels for nebulous concepts and imbuing them substance is covered in other posts.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Just this unknowable way

This way ...is best only as a way to realizing and being, wishing for no other way to be the way, than it is looking for what you would otherwise desire to become.

~ ~ ~

Perhaps..

There is 'where you are' and 'where you wish to be'. If these are different then you're unhappy.

Happiness is when 'where you are' and 'where you wish to be' are the same.

It is not though to change where you are or what you think, but realize that wishing to be anywhere else causes unhappiness.

Where you are, right now, is unchangeable, so accept where you are and you'll be happy.

Then the future lives on in this happiness.

When you're not looking to be happy, you can only be happy.

Consequently and apparently - happiness is only sought for by the unhappy. A goal of happiness makes the present location, by definition, unhappiness.

~ ~

Then, there is no chooser, no actor to act, to wish for another way or to accept the current way - there is only the way - no actor, no acted..

Just this unknowable way.

What is. Not what would, could or should be.

~

The apparent solution to all concern is an awakening, enlightenment. Yet it is the very projection of this 'other way/state' that turns the present perfection into imperfection that must be escaped.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Ice decides to melt

Try this claim for size:

"I allowed myself to break free from the false idea of free will and live now truly free."

No matter the verb following the pronoun "I" at the beginning of the sentence there is conflict. One can not bring about any action if free will is not the case. Then free will exists? Well, no, it does not. What we have is an exposure of how our given language, grammar and vocabularies shape our explanations.

Should I have two children in their first couple of years of life and encourage each to say a different word than one another when they see a dog then they will, in later life, internally voice these sounds when they think of or see a dog. This experiment is proven by two children who grow up in countries where different languages are spoken.

So called consciousness - being conscious of a dog in this case - requires a learned label. No label, no internal voice, we are said to be unconscious of that phenomena. You can prove this true by attempting to hold in your awareness any one thing that you've never seen before and have no label for. Impossible as this is it is great for us that we have nebulous container words and place holders in our language (such as "thing", "stuff" and so on) to allow us to wriggle free of certain death.

Then, if we have a set vocabulary and grammar structure, our descriptive, conscious worlds are fictions and very barren. The world you "consciously think" about is not as colourful as you had once thought, it is far from accurate, and is very unreal. Nothing said in words by a "conscious being" relates at all to what's out there in reality.

A dog watching his owner play chess may well recognize his owner, may even sense the owners mood, but has no consciousness of the progress of the game. A human watching grass grow can tell many stories about the event but is unconscious of the underlying mechanism of growth. When the science explaining the quantum mechanical effects underlying photosynthesis are understood, well enough to be rendered in language, then the person may believe they are now conscious of the system but, as vocabulary and language structure do not fit the quantum world - they're not.

There are many cases in which we can see that the learned world of labels, which is also the world we are apparently conscious of, is not reality. The description or storyline that we attach to the world is subjective, unique and of miniscule resolution. The true reality is an indefinable movement of uncaused being, of which no one can be separate. No one is doing anything, but in that movement of oneness, there can be constructed inner worlds. - Conscious worlds mapped by low resolution bits. Consciousness says the world is bits, primarily "I" and other key players.

Truth sees itself, unformed, shifting. Nebulous.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao