Life Matters, E.C.Nemeth [robert munsch read aloud .TXT] 📗

entire life. It is because in order to become aware of the underlying problem requires taking on beliefs not within accepted norms. Since I was trained to believe in my personal authority, I cannot question my long held beliefs without some sort of conflict. Yet it is the conflict itself that testifies to the correct decision to question personal authority in the first place. For the conflict uncovers an interesting point: any consistent set of beliefs will testify to its own truth so long as it is not challenged. Add to that idea the fact that conflict means one thing for sure: what I now believe is not the truth. For if I believed in what is true then I would simply ignore the false, knowing it is not real, and there would be no conflict. So it is because of the conflict of my societal indoctrination and my searching for another set of beliefs that induces a sense of threat and has caused my lifelong reluctance to even look at the underlying problem.
The realization of these two key facts, that any consistent set of beliefs will seem true so long as it is not challenged by another set of beliefs and that conflict between old and new beliefs means that the old beliefs are not true, uncovers the pseudo-reality of the ego and how it deludes me into taking on its beliefs as my own and at the same time shows me that I am not the ego.
This separation between ego and self, between two conflicting thought systems, causes instability and uncertainty. It is the path to salvation, to freedom, but first the chains of bondage have to be cut. In order to drop the cross, the burden of a useless life, I must first see that I am carrying a cross and then I must see that the cross can be dropped. There is only one way to accomplish the first and the second I cannot do on my own.
To see that I am carrying a cross I must at least consider accepting another set of beliefs. Only then will I set up a state of conflicting values that, in competing for my attention, illustrates my autonomy. In other words, the conflict is the gift that shows me I am not conflicted. Since conflict and peace cannot co-exist they cannot be the same. So, since the conflict is seen outside of myself, I am made aware of the fact that I must be accepting the conflict as mine.
The next step, once I own the conflict, is to let it go. To let it go I must assume another set of beliefs that corrects my original, core beliefs. But how do I know what beliefs to take on? I’ll only be risking the same trauma if my new beliefs are proven false latter on, again. And what is important to me? What are my goals? Do I really have ambitions and desires, ego-driven or otherwise?
And what if I don’t choose? What then? What if I go through life with no values? Is that even possible? What is my function and do I really have one? What do I want?
These questions plague me, still, today. How can I make a choice until I fully understand the implications of that choice? What I want seems to depend on many variables, not all of them are immediately obvious, or even vaguely discernable after closer scrutiny. The more I think about it the more things there are to consider when thinking about it. It’s a vicious circle.
This second step relies on the correct application of the first principle. To arrive at this second step, must first mean that I have accepted that the conflict is self-created. The self-created conflict arose by adopting a set of false beliefs about myself and the world. This means that I cannot decide alone what new beliefs to replace the old with. If I do the conflict will return. This is part of the realization of step one. Once the idea fully sinks in, and the lesson is learned, the circular reasoning that leads back to relearning step one over and over is finally side-stepped and circumvented for all time.
It is a hard one, though. Let’s get the shock over with. The ego, when I thought it was me, did not know ... but I do. There, it’s out. Who is this “I” that knows? It is the little me transcended, reconnected to the Source. Identified with the ego, I assented to pretend to have no access to direct knowledge. Once I dissociated from the ego the first thing that happened is that the seventh chakra reconnected to the Earth chakra. Guidance is immediate, as it always was even when I was unaware of it.
The reconnection is disorienting only to the degree that I resist it and cling to my old beliefs. And I will resist to the degree that I have not re-evaluated my values based on my new beliefs. I will resist to the degree to which my integration is incomplete. And I will resist as long as I have any belief in the degrees of completion. For the eternal are always complete and whole.
The Voice of Sanity is silent. It upholds no pretense and knows not of conflict. It comes in peace to the peaceful. It can be chosen against but it cannot be ignored. Sanity calls to the sane part of my mind and I turn my head askance. What was that? I bid the asker, listen. Harken to the silence, while I reach with my heart. For the soul is the heart of my mind, the core of my perfect sanity. Do I dare consider my magnificence? Do I dare not? Blessed be The One.
The trick mirror
It is my values I resist looking at. That is because after all this time I still cling to the nostalgic, old world, charm of the ego. I have based my values on those things that alleviate fear, pain, boredom, or any other unpleasant symptom. But in deciding what is unpleasant, I have had to assume authority over reality. Since I don’t really have that authority, I have decided incorrectly and therefore valued wrongly.
These are my sacred core beliefs. When they go, the ego goes. So the threat is so severe to the ego, and therefore indirectly to myself, that it pulls out all the stops in preventing their honest appraisal. Every trick is employed to keep me from assessing my core beliefs. I won’t go into those tricks right now but as time wears on they all come into play and they become very obvious. Even now, as I write about this, my mind keeps wandering, and I feel a deep reluctance to continue in this vein. So much so that I am going to stop writing now.
Here I am the next day and, although I like the material and how I covered it, I am again reluctant to continue. This is the stuff I haven't ever looked at. I have taken the occasional short glimpses over the years but I have never sat down and crunched the numbers, so to speak. I cannot even report my feelings in this area truthfully because of this knot that appears in my solar plexus. I just do not want to go here. It scares me, a lot.
So I am going to stop writing again. But first I wish to recommend the two books by Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and "Lila". The former jumped out at me in the book store a few weeks back. I had heard about it a long time ago and always meant to read it one day. So I read it last week. "Lila" I read right after. They are both excellent works; both relate directly to values, or "quality". Pirsig places value, or his favored word, quality, above all other considerations. Quality determines reality by virtue of intrinsic value, value that is built into reality. In my mind this idea leads directly to the notion of intelligent design. Agreeing with Pirsig's fundamental message has interesting ramifications. Those are what I would like to explore next. Maybe by then I'll be ready to explore my core beliefs in more detail.
While reading the first book, Zen and the art..., I felt like he really had something, but at the same time I had a nagging feeling that he had also missed something important. I couldn't put my finger on it until the second book, Lila. That is where he gives it away. Quality is a dualistic philosophy. In the first book, Pirsig unifies energy and matter under the umbrella of quality, which he claims precedes both. In the second book he goes on to divide quality into two types, static and dynamic. For me it seemed like the author was on the right track by unifying energy and matter but then, in the second book, he dissects, or bisects, quality into static and dynamic thereby reasserting the underlying falsity that intellectuality is always so susceptible to.
But values are the guiding principle in rating various courses of action. Values tie desire and its ambition to belief and its perception. Sometimes I write stuff I have to stop and consider carefully. The previous sentence is one of those times. That is the ramification I referred to in the last paragraph. Desire, and its consequent ambition to be satiated, drives the formation of beliefs designed from the beginning to fulfill the desire by perceiving it so fulfilled. I have to drop this again. Funny, that.
I'll try another vein. Every time I come too close to this secret place, I experience confusion, insignificance, panic and fear - in that order. And then I feel I have to drop it. Or something distracts me, something totally unrelated, and I forget the subject, conveniently, until later. When I remember the subject later, it comes with a feeling of unimportance or mild annoyance, as if I thought I had already dealt with the issue and given it an unsatisfactory grade. But I know I have yet to pursue it beyond even an initial cursory glance.
How do I say it? It's kind of like a mirage. It looks real and very significant so I begin moving toward it but it vanishes, only to show up in another direction entirely. But when I turn that way it is gone again. Or it is like one-way glass. I look through it and see something interesting but every time I try to analyze what I am seeing the glass suddenly only reflects my own image back to me.
It is like a darkness so black it seems solid. This blackness engulfs me. It walls me away in complete darkness - a void I cannot penetrate. In this cave I am imprisoned, alone and without light. And then sometimes a voice whispers from beyond the wall of black, speaking of the light within me. Why do I see anything at all, it asks, in answer to my suspicions, if not for the light within. If I am walled in by darkness then no light can get in, yet I see so I must carry the light within me. Much commotion is made by this notion in the name of all things holy, but who can claim to know holiness? And just what is meant by the holy? This is what it whispers of, that disembodied voice more familiar than my own.
That voice is sometimes a thought or more exactly a picture-gram. It relays information across temporal and spatial realities in the language of light to the beings of light. Great Rays of illumination, intertwined spirals of thought and word, washes constantly over all realities.
And when I am overwhelmed by the light, and I feel