Scribe
Scribe
2012
Altered Reality
Alternative Lifestyle: still Altered Reality – not enlightenment.
Here's the thing: Years ago I met some Jains (Jainism, a path of nonviolence) who covered their noses and mouths with masks, so as not to destroy any insects accidentally breathed in. They were against gardening and agriculture, because it killed insects and dispossessed them from habitat, yet they ate salads that other people made possible through gardening and agriculture.
Right to life, human rights, animal rights, divine rights, dominion: “… go in and possess the land…” Under what moral injunctions do we live life on earth? Where does our right to life begin and end? And what of divine order, a plan, a blueprint divinely ordained?
Every time, one cleans and vacuums their house, one destroys "invisible" insect larvae and insects that have a right to life. Every time you clean/sanitize your counter tops and eating surfaces, you are out-competing insects (small animals) for life sustaining food remnants – not to mention destroying bacteria and viruses along the way. Selectively choosing to be unaware of the ants and other insects that you push broom into oblivion in "managing" your environment, does not change the fact that you have made a decision to serve your needs "over others’ needs."
“Sleepwalking” doesn’t give you amnesty. Not hearing their cries and crunches beneath your feet, not feeling their fear does not qualify you for vegetarian or vegan sainthood (whatever that might be). Merely abstaining from eating flesh does not adjudicate you “harmless.” You might want to look away from the celestial sky of your self-anointing and see the very human footprints you leave upon the earth. Perhaps there ordinariness belies the realization of ultimate truth and divine order you imagine of yourself (if such an order even exists). It might better serve you and humanity to contemplate the incongruity of a “perfect ordered reality” that, at its fundamental level of organization, is apparently cannibalistic.
"Choosing" to follow your personal spiritual creed for which you moralize your way through this cosmic dream doesn’t free you to know the ultimate reality, to dwell in the ultimate "ahimsa" (nonviolence). This dream is relative, a relative reality with relative truths. Moment to moment, we assess this realm and our place in it. Like our other dreams, it is insubstantial. Like them, on awakening, we will see it for what it is, not what we contrive it to be.
The contradictions are infinite. No choice we make proves our "truth," and – if we are totally honest with ourselves – gives us the ultimate upper hand over anyone else in health, longevity, peace, happiness and spiritual wisdom. Nor does it – and this is big – substantiate the ultimate stewardship of life here. The theoretical truth of "superior life" based on "superior truth" falls apart in the actual living of it. We choose our path, but all is unproven and “rehearsed,” according to belief – as long as we sleep. And sleep we will, as long as dream holds our interest. Dream is the product of sleep, sleep is the product of unconsciousness.
Unconditional love is the essence of true reality, but it is always conditioned in dream by dream form. Every dream action, is both positive and negative, simultaneously giving to one form, taking from another. Consequently, there is no action, no act that is completely harmless within the dream. Intention arising from beyond the dream is pure at the point of origination. Once distilled in dream reality, however, it is dual, and cannot be absolutely harmless. Thus, all dogmas, doctrines, philosophies, religions, and ideologies are at best systems of individual or collective faith, made up of articles of faith. Faith is dreaming. Belief is dreaming. Birth, first breath; death, last breath, everything in-between – all dream, all asleep.
Not true, not enlightenment, not liberation, not unconditional love.
NOT AWAKE!
Carl
Wednesday, July 25, 2012