Do you define yourself as a victim of the world or as the world? You are not a victim. You are doing it.
Alan Watts
Excuse the typos that may appear. I am finding it hard to write because of the eye.
Thoughts are just pointers, Eckhart Tolle reminds us in Should I Ignore Nice Thoughts? Positive thoughts, such as, "Life is beautiful" may point to and lead to a certain amount of appreciation for Life. That's wonderful but we know from studies that the majority of our thoughts are not positive ones. They do not have the same compulsive quality to them that negative thoughts have. We are more likely to attach to and identify with the negative. These thoughts tend to run ramped, proliferating like cancer cells trapping us in stories and creating barricades between the story character and who we really are. ( see last two entries). He reminds us:
The most vital thing is to remember what is beyond all thought.
What is beyond the thought?
We are...who we really are beyond the veil of the thinking mind.
Instead of trying to convince ourselves that we should appreciate Life through our thoughts, we should simply experience that appreciation directly through presence. We can only do that when we are beyond the thought veil and seeing the Self that is there..
Awareness of who we are is always the main goal and that awareness is "non-conceptual"...we cannot explain who we really are or know it with the thinking mind. We can only be it. Understanding our thinking tendency and how the mind works is a crucial step in realization. Recognizing how we so easily get caught up in thought/story is the first step to waking up and waking up is all about knowing , beyond thought, who we really are.
Could the Dramas Play a Significant Part in Our Awakening?
Alan Watts takes this pointer a little farther by reminding us that Life itself is a drama that we as Self have created in order to have the challenge of discovering ourSelves beneath it.
Say What Crazy Lady?
I know, it sounds like another riddle. Bear with me.
In the last two entries I spoke about the mental movie I often get trapped in when negative thought takes over. When I am in that movie , it all seems so real. I am the character wearing the costume, reading the script and the plot appears to be happening to this character, this "victim" of Life called "me". The props seem so real too. I mentioned in one entry how there is an acting coach( the thought addicted ego) there telling me, the actress, to assume that I am powerless to what is happening and totally not responsible for any of it. With stern and aggressive direction it tells me to stay in character. I do. While in the movie, I am a true victim. I stay lost in this mental drama...seeing it all as real...feeling so trapped by "my" life...until the kind and soft spoken director says "Cut!"
I am then brought back to reality. The veil comes down and I realize I was momentarily lost in thinking. I was just playing a thought directed part and that none of it was real anywhere but in my mind. I am present again in this moment. There is no thought. I am experiencing Life directly I am that. Tat Taum Asi. I am what I am. I look into the set of my mind. I see that I am all of it...the acting coach, the screen writer, the make up artist, the director that says "Take!" and the director that says "Cut!" I am responsible for all of it and I am none of it. It is mind blowing. I stay here for a bit experiencing directly this appreciation for Life.
Then I get called back to the set and I get lost again in the movie.
"Keep Pulling Me Back In"
Why? Why...if I have these glimpses of realization do I keep getting pulled back to the movie, to the thinking, to the "suffering"?
I haven't yet paid the price. And I was never pulled back...I willingly went back!
Watts tells us that we won't fully wake up until we feel we have paid the price for it. We are just actors in a big drama that God is playing through us. In those moments we have, if we are lucky and willing enough to hear the "Cut!" , we will step out of character and see we were just playing a part. Veils will go down and we will realize who we are beneath our costumes and roles. We will see that we are not the separate character...not the victim alone and exposed to external circumstances against her will...but that we are everything! Not only that, but we will see that we are willingly playing the part every time we jump onto that set. We are responsible for it.
You are not victims of the scheme of things, of a mechanical world or an autocratic God. The Life you are living is what you put yourself in. You don't admit this because you want to play the part.
What? Who would want to play this part I am playing, to get lost in a horror movie, or a tragedy like this again and again?
Watts encourages us to look at Life as a game, "a far out play" and to see how we are deliberately involved in it. He more or less explains that we come down here into this incarnation we call "me" in order to take part in the ultimate challenge. The challenge consists of getting as lost as we can in our minds, to go as far away from realizing who we really are as we can just so we can find our way back. Why...so we can pay the price for a just reward. You play "non-bliss in order to experience bliss . The bliss of experiencing who we really are can not be without first experiencing the suffering that comes with forgetting who we really are.
The world is God's drama, he explains, and we are emanations of God. So when we meet the challenge of discovering who we really are, God sees God through our realization...that is why the bliss we experience in enlightenment is so pure. We are here to abandon Self for "self" just so we can abandon self for Self.
Well this idea that we could be deliberately taking part in a big game of "Find Self/ Find God" beyond the drama and that we are creating and starring in our own movies of suffering in order to do that...is still blowing my mind a bit. So I will leave it here.
All is well!
Eckhart Tolle (October 6, 2022) Should I Ignore Nice Thoughts? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SBSYS9exr4
Alan Watts (October 5, 2022) We Have Forgotten Who We Are.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DffomqkDMCw
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