Playing with Perspectives

[UnbornTao]

Finding Yourself Contemplation

Get at the most real and present sense of yourself that you can. Find you. What comes to mind? Do this now.

Notice that everything that arose came to you. Everything is received by you but are you a perception? Is you perceived? Who is perceiving what came to mind as a result of the above exercise?

Edited Monday at 08:24 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

[UnbornTao]

Why is an adversarial disposition towards others adopted?

[UnbornTao]

Powerful quote that resonated with me:

Quote

"Pleasure does not provide purpose. Human beings want to collect and pursue
their thousands of pleasures, excitements and mental stimulations, all in
the unseen false assumption that if you collect enough pleasures, they will
somehow harden into purpose. That is, they believe that a hardened mass of
excitements, of things to look forward to, will somehow magically turn into
a reassuring purpose that the individual is heading in the right direction
toward good results. It can never happen.

The pleasures of this world are the pleasures of this world. You can build
a purpose, to be sure, in spending all your time making money and making
plans for your social advancement; but if you call them purpose, call them
a true destination, you will have deceived yourself without realizing it,
because you yourself, the individual himself has placed the word purposeful
life, meaningful life, worthwhile life on his accumulation of pleasures,
and he has lied to himself and he will suffer terribly.

The pleasures that are so freely offered and accepted from the financial
world and the social world and the romantic world, all those pleasures are
lures, temptations sent out to snare the weak and the foolish and the
gullible and the dishonest.

It is now time for you, as a spiritual student, to realize the mistake you
have made in thinking that you can create any kind of a good for yourself,
anything that's satisfying, including a sense of fulfillment, of
destination.

I've asked you to do something that is marvelously daring, that has the
first seed of true purpose in it. I've asked you to be more than
suspicious. I've asked you to ask the question, 'Can anything good come out
of my mind the way it operates now, the level, the low-level that my whole
psychic system operates on? Can anything good come out of that?' No!"

- from a talk given 5/7/1989 by Vernon Howard

 

Edited Monday at 08:26 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

Edited Monday at 08:31 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Reality is continuously giving you feedback on the consequences and appropriateness of your actions. Pay close attention and make corrections when necessary.

Contrary to common belief, being corrected doesn’t make you wrong--quite the opposite! Correction guides you back to appropriate action (which is determined by your purpose). The mistake people make is persisting in doing things "their way" when feedback shows that such an approach isn’t producing the intended results.

You must become increasingly aware of your thinking, feeling, and acting. Ask yourself:

• What is ineffective?
• What works?
• What could be done more powerfully or effortlessly?
• Which principles govern this subject matter?

Edited Monday at 08:48 PM by UnbornTao

[Sincerity]

5 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

Reality is continuously giving you feedback on the consequences of your actions. Pay close attention and correct when necessary.

Contrary to what's commonly thought, being corrected doesn't make you wrong but the other way around! Notice that correction pushes you back to the road of appropriate action. The mistake people make is insisting on their way of doing things when presented with feedback that "their way" isn't producing the intended results. You have to become increasingly aware of your thinking, feeling and acting. What is ineffective? What works? What could be done more powerfully? Which principles govern this or that subject matter?

Love that. 

You maintain a great journal.

[UnbornTao]

On 11/6/2023 at 6:58 PM, Sincerity said:

Love that. 

You maintain a great journal.

Thank you!

Edited Monday at 08:48 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

What's significant in life must be created by you; otherwise, you'll end up living an inherited life.

Play a game worth playing that is bigger than you and that causes you to be authentic.

Edited 18 hours ago by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Quote

The real point to the est Training was to go down through layer after layer [...] until you got to the last layer and peeled it off, where the recognition was that it's really all meaningless and empty. That's Existentialism's endpoint. Est went a step further in that people began to recognize that it was not only meaningless and empty, but it was empty and meaningless that it was empty and meaningless. And in that there's an enormous freedom. All the constrictions, all of the rules you've placed on yourself are gone, and what you're left with is nothing. And nothing is an extraordinarily powerful place to stand, because it is only from nothing that you can create. And from this nothing people were able to invent a life.

- Werner Erhard.

 

Edited Monday at 08:56 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Quote

Acting out of the mistaken belief that one must have a leadership position (or a position of authority or decision rights) in order to be a leader, dramatically reduces one’s ability to be a leader in any situation, no matter what the circumstances are.

- Werner Erhard.

 

Edited Monday at 09:16 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

A form of seemingly inherent joy naturally comes to the forefront of one’s experience whenever you get out of your own way. Increasing awareness tends to open the door for bliss to become more readily available as a lived experience. In such moments, rather than struggling, you are simply free to be.

Cultivate presence and conscious attention--many benefits will arise from this practice.

Edited Monday at 09:17 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Problem-solving and creating are fundamentally different approaches to any situation.

Consider this: What happens when all your problems are solved? Chances are, your situation remains much the same--only now, it’s merely free of problems, not filled with what you actually want.

So ask yourself: What do you want to create? How can you begin moving in that direction right now? What one action can you take today that moves you forward?

Edited Monday at 09:22 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

It doesn't have to be true nor make sense for it to work.

Edited November 13, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Quote

Whenever there's another, fear arises.

- The Upanishads

 

Edited Tuesday at 12:38 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

 

Edited Tuesday at 12:39 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Some of my recent communications have at times been unnecessarily dismissive and harsh. This is a reminder not to undermine the contemplation work because of personal challenges.

Edited Tuesday at 12:41 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

We usually are actively looking for things to believe in! That’s what humans seem to be up to, for the most part—especially in spiritual or philosophical circles. Believing is easy and convenient, while genuine investigation is challenging. It demands discipline, time, and effort, and it can threaten our existing worldview, self-identity, and attachments.

Edited Tuesday at 12:47 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Excuses are used to justify your behavior, making you appear 'good' and right in your own mind so you can continue doing what you’re doing. They’re a way of avoiding responsibility--letting you off the hook.

What if you stopped making excuses? Consider simply acknowledging to yourself what you do--and what you don’t, with no story to explain or justify it.

"I did this--or didn't--and am willing to face the consequences, whether negative or positive."

Edited Tuesday at 01:11 PM by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

Notice whether you play the game of life to create what you want or to avoid loss.

Avoiding loss shows up in various ways:

1. Don’t play any game. Don’t take anything up. Be complacent. The reasoning here is: if I don’t play, I can’t lose.
2. Avoid completing anything. You can’t lose if it’s left unfinished.
3. Do it half-heartedly. “But I didn’t really try” is yet another way to avoid loss.
4. Keep others from winning. You appear to lose when others win--so you sabotage their efforts to keep your position of relative safety. If no one wins, then (you think) you haven’t lost.
5. Play the nice guy/girl role. Pretend to like everyone, be nice to everyone, so we can all silently agree that you haven’t lost. It’d be rude for them to tell you otherwise.
6. Turn yourself into the game. Become a problem so that you become the center of attention. Get sick, throw tantrums, destroy the game--whatever it takes to make others stop playing and take care of you.
7. Adopt the judge’s role. Play “the righteous judge.” Since you’re not actively creating the results you want, you attack others’ vitality and enthusiasm instead. Criticize, blame, denigrate, troll, sabotage, act righteous, “debunk”--so your relative position appears good and “right,” despite producing no significant result in your own life.

Does any of the above resonate with you? Have you encountered people who operate this way?

Edited Tuesday at 01:18 PM by UnbornTao