Tuesday, April 17, 2012

New wine into old wineskins

Most Christians are not Christians really.
They don’t forgive their enemies,
they store up for themselves treasures on earth
and they blow trumpets when they give alms.

Likewise, most spiritually awakened people are not awakened.
They’re still sleeping,
They’ve simply created new dream worlds,
with recycled Hindu beliefs,
obsolete metaphysical speculations and ancient superstitions.

                                   ***

Does this kind of thinking make you feel good?
Isn’t it better to construct positive thoughts?
Smart thoughts are useless, as I see it,
if they make me feel that people are mad and that life sucks.
It’s not important if thoughts are true or not
as long as they are not harmful to other people.
Self-deceptions can be much more helpful than truths.
They can make us encouraged instead of miserable.

                                   ***

Well, maybe self-deceptions can be helpful in certain situations
and in certain periods of life,
however, they are not always helpful.
They are like potent drugs with dangerous side effects, as I see it.
Sometimes we have to resort to convenient explanations,
sometimes we have to question our explanations.

(You can fool yourself completely, at times,
and parts of yourself till you die,
but you can’t fool all parts of yourself, all of the time.)


http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_said_'You_can_fool_all_the_people_some_of_the_time_and_some_of_the_people_all_the_time_but_you_cannot_fool_all_the_people_all_the_time'

Monday, April 16, 2012

Identity

You’re a Catholic or an atheist,
a leftist or a rightist
black or white,
upper class or outcast…

You have an identity.
You are someone.
You belong to a group,
a gang, a community.

You’re a Zulu, a gypsy or a Croatian,
a Sunni or a Shia Muslim, a Brahmin,
an intellectual snob or a spiritualist.

It’s obviously very important to have an identity.
However, you forget your identity during large parts of the day.
You forget who you are because you’re engrossed in work,
a sunset, playing with kids or whatever.
Identity and no-identity are two aspects of life.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

The great unknown

The world you know of,
the everyday world,
the world you can grasp,
is just a tiny, tiny part of the universe.

Outside your little world is the great unknown.
What is it like out there?
You have no idea.
You can only speculate and fantasize,
parallel realities, other dimensions, ancient kingdoms…
or just darkness.

The conscious self is just a tiny, tiny part of your mind.
The world you know of, the world here and now, under your nose,
is like a small, small boat out on the Atlantic ocean, at night.
A hurricane lamp dispels demons and bad spirits.
Beneath the surface, tons of mysterious sea creatures,
whales, octopuses, eel…
above, the sky filled with stars.
The world self is enormous.

When I die, I believe, I will disappear.
I will not end up anywhere and I will not come back.
However, the world self will always be there.

Spiritual compartmentalization

Spiritual teachers rarely work.
They are monks or earn their living by talking about spirituality.
This is why working people often find it difficult to understand them.
We simply can’t relate to their life experiences.

Spiritual teachers and monks live in a world of their own,
secluded and cared for.
This is OK.
However, you will get confused
if you try to apply their wisdom in your daily life.
Their wisdom is not meant for you.
It is meant for other monks or for those who don’t have to work
to earn a living.

For example,
they often overemphasize the importance of the now.
For a working person is the now not all there is.
Of course it’s important to be able to be present.
It’s important to not get lost completely in dream worlds.
It goes without saying.
However, the present now is not all there is.
Working people have to accomplish something and they have to be finished in time.
They have to get past many obstacles.
The idea that “Only the now is real.” is a typical monk idea.