7.04.11 -

INDEPENDENCE DAY!

DECLARE YOUR OWN INDEPENDENCE FROM FEAR

By Sherman R. Buck

I'm listening to the fireworks going off in the surrounding neighborhood where I live, the fizzle, popping, banging sounds that accompany their expressions. I received a text today from my sister wishing me a happy 4th, reminding me about Independence Day here in the USA. From this arose another thought relating to how each of us needs to declare our own independence from the insanity of cultural dysfunction, to be able to function authentically without fear, guilt, or shame. The many "BELIEVE" they are functional, but the lie continues unabated behind the distortions of thinking.

I was at Green Lake Park the other day, sitting in the passing moments of BEING rather than time, caught in the reverie of the living grace of the divine presenting itself all around me in its infinite forms. The warmth of the Sun shining upon all beings, highlighting and contrasting the incredible kaleidoscope spectrum of colors. Watching the Swallows exquisite maneuvers in the space around me and simultaneously in awe of their iridescent colors being reflected from the Sun. Time was irrelevant and absent watching little pieces of white fluff from particular trees floating carefree in the vibrant living currents of atmospheric wonder. All the trees, the sounds of those swimming in the lake, bikes and skaters whizzing by on the nearby trails, catching snippets of conversations about a multitude of realities. And most of all, realizing how many shared and unshared cultural filters limiting how one sees the fullness of Divine reality.

True freedom is being able to be present to see life as it is, rather than a distortion compressed by one's beliefs and thinking. Fear is the compressor; love is a verb, the act of decompressing, the ongoing dance of letting go, releasing, relaxing into the existence of now, like the breeze of the Wind, the shining of the Sun, the flow of the Water, the Singing of the birds, and the exquisite fluid movements of life's existence vibrating in harmony with all that is.

I write using a lot of words because one of the dysfunctional side effects of insanity is to reduce, limit, simplify life to a word; how absurd. How does one simplify the many Divine expressions on this particular world with one or two words for the sake of keeping it short and sweet; how about short and ignorant. I wrote an essay once that was turned down for publication due to my "excessive" use of words to describe aspects of life. Quite frankly, if one were to try and put into words their direct experiences of presence of both their inner/outer experience for an hour, they would have to write a lot of books to describe all that arose in their awareness. Just a simple ten second observation could take up several pages. This of course would differ depending on what level of awareness one was at doing the observing.

Humans use words to affect/create a point of reference, then that point becomes reality, rather than reality itself. This is the drawback of education, where one then goes through life labeling every thing they see; the need to label, put words or rather meaning to what we are seeing before we enjoy the moment without those filters of words. We see a tree, and we immediately label it a specific genus, then further categories of size, shape, age, colors. When it comes to colors, the mind is quick to paint say a tree's leaves as green, and all the leaves become the same hue of green. Yet, if one makes the effort to be present and really focus on the leaves, they will begin to notice that there are various hues of greens from light to dark. My point is the filter picks the dominant color and shuts out the rest. Presence notices these variations in hues and does not filter them out.

Humans do this at every level of labeling, categorizing, filtering and in the process imprison themselves in a compressed version of reality. This compression of the living existence into words/beliefs creates a delusional filtered version of reality that imprisons one in a make believe world. Letting go of the make believe world allows one to be present to life as it is without the need for words, or the need to put things into boxes. We do this for a sense of security because living in ego mind we don't feel safe, because we are caught up in fear. Love doesn't need boxes, can enjoy the moments without needing to know or judge. This is why children are full of joy, bliss, and ecstasy, and why they are able to just be and explore, and remain curious and inquisitive about all that is. They wonder, which is to say they are wonderful or rather full of wonder rather than full of intellect.

Adults think intellect is of utmost importance, but the reality of that lie is dysfunction professing to be brilliance; it is anything but that; dullness perhaps, boredom, arrogance, blindness, deafness; a grain of the full truth of all the sand in the desert. Intellect is a tool, but it is not the intelligence that flows through the outer world and through each of us as an extension of Divine Vastness. One cannot hope to keep up with the flow of divine presence/wisdom/information with mental thinking. If one could open up and allow through listening, being open to presence arriving, they would receive awareness of so much more than the few crumbs that culture passes around as gems. Education and cultural conditioning train one to use only the left brain, effectively shutting out awareness of perhaps 99% of what is possible with whole brain thinking.

Each of us as soul incarnates into this world as geniuses and we are domesticated into crippling sub levels of intelligence based on vast regions of ignorance. We are taught to hold onto a lot of non-sensical concepts born out of fear; fear of not getting what we want, fear of being hurt, fear of being abandoned, and fear of not being good enough. And from those distortions of fear is born the obsession with glamour, greed, and power over others. The only way the brilliance of genius can BE in the world is in the presence of love. The only way to BE FREE is to let go of thinking. Just like my sitting outside in Nature for a couple of hours doing nothing, allowed me to be in the presence of innate knowing. Letting go of thinking allowed me a window into greater awareness of the fullness of life around me. The problem with thinking is one cannot be present to all that is when one is thinking. One cannot do both at the same time. One cannot be completely present when they are trying to put words/labels/understanding/judgments to every single iota of life unfolding around them.

There is another way of knowing that connects directly to the experience, is the experience, becomes the experience, and hence knows the experience. This is not something to intellectualize about. One has to remember how to open up and slip into the silence that is beyond the incessant mind chatter. In that silence one begins to experience this other way of knowing, which requires one to develop an awareness of discernment of the whole truth of love versus the half-truth of fear. This is similar to channel surfing on the radio looking for a particular radio station or searching the web looking for a particular website or seeking a wave with which one finds the groove to ride it out.

LET GO OF THE NEED TO THINK

BE IN SILENCE; ALLOW SILENCE

Stillness leads to silence; stillness is silence

Stillness and silence open the the Divine portal into authentic being and authentic knowing

7-06-11 -

Thermonuclear Bombs

By Sherman R. Buck

I was contemplating about our Beingness tonight, on how the many stifle it, holding it within as if their very life counted on it. As children, our life did depend on holding our Being at bay, to stifle it, hide it, judge it, and eventually condemn from our existence. If you haven't read the book or seen the movie Sphere, then I suggest that you do. The immensity of our being is like a thermonuclear bomb. You've seen the movies of an H-bomb going off, so you get an idea of the incredible power within. I use this example because it presents an idea of what we are holding in by stifling our Being. Am I saying when we let go that we will destroy everything in our path? No, not at all. If you look at all the destruction going on in the world in the name of fear, then you understand how important letting go is. War or peace is the choice? Armageddon is really about this inner struggle of Being being and ego seeking to stifle Being. 

What I am suggesting is a way to understand what it is we do to ourselves when we stifle our authentic self. Imagine how wonderful the Sun is when it is shining midday surrounded by the most brilliant blue skies without a cloud in the sky. Now imagine the same Sun completely obscured by clouds. The many are like that image, completely oblivious to their own blinding Sun that is covered up by all those clouds of doubt, judgment, fear, guilt, and shame. The truth is our Being goes nowhere, it is our attention or lack thereof that makes Being disappear; thinking makes it so. Consider then the illusory nature of thinking.

Nothing can touch your Being; it is untouchable, and nothing can harm it period; it is inextinguishable. Your soul is existential as much as Divinity itself. We live within the Divine, this living planet, all of it, every creature on it including us is God/Goddess, with all of us a living extension of their divine radiance, of grace expressing itself in infinite creative projects/projections. There are positive and negative projections. Positive projections are those that arise from Love. Negative projections arise from fear. Each thought we entertain unfolds into the reality we behold with our five senses. And yet there is far more than one can imagine within the confines of their own finite cultural dysfunction.

To deny one's existence, one's existentialism, one's authentic Being, is a creative act that has immense implications that we can all readily see at play in the world of insanity feigning to be sanity. There is a cause and effect that unfolds from the sort of thoughts one entertains. Even more so, when one has no awareness of those silent buried thoughts that belie a different story than the one the many profess to "believe," about themselves. Taking the time to bear witness to the onslaught of mental masturbation within will reveal the scope of the problem if one is willing to take the reigns from ego to put a stop to the distractions ad nauseum. Were one to navigate through these uncharted waters, they would find the unaltered structures of their own psyche untarnished and untainted, waiting to be ushered into awareness in order to bring about wholeness

This does not mean we live these saintly lives that organized religion would have the many believe, because in reality, everything we judge in the other is right here within each of us. We are not so privileged in our divine natures to be able to exorcise those demons, because we all have these archetypal psychical forces within our own Being. What we do with them, how we BE with them is the greater challenge. One either builds a house of cards or a house built on a solid foundation. One that judges nothing lest one get caught in the trap of FEAR. Judgments are the building blocks of walls that one by one eventually create psychic structures imprisoning oneself from their authentic self.

You might inquire, how can this be true, how can we all have these bad things in us?  

Divinity is all that is, the Pain and suffering is what makes it disappear, or the attachment to pain and suffering. Physical pain is one thing and that is something that is real. However that may be, the real problem is the emotional and mental pain are the distortions we need to be