Pleasure is spread through the earth
In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find
- Wordsworth
A wise man once told me that you can’t jump in a bucket of blue dye and be surprised when you come out all covered in blue. For blue dye substitute the world, you just can’t be in this world and not be affected by it. Your thoughts and actions are indelibly coded by the world we find ourselves to be a part of.
I studied philosophy for many years and at one level philosophy is about creating an argument which is unassailable. The ultimate philosophy is the one which is ultimately unassailable. We get hung up on things like perfection and systems that are flawless when it is abundantly clear that we are witnesses to the Universe and not the creators of that Universe. We can manipulate circumstances to a degree and we can persuade ourselves in certain ways about the nature of things but ultimately we are adrift in an ocean of chance.
Inside us all there are keys to understanding that lie dormant. They wait integration within a system that they are designed to be part of. Think how seeds were found in Ancient Egyptian burial chambers that germinated after thousands of years in a dormant state. This is you, me and everyone that we meet and ours is to explore that which we discover ourselves to be a part of. Creation is an illusion that we may allow ourselves, the reality is that we are managers of that which we find ourselves immersed within. That’s our bucket of blue dye if you like.
I recently understood how a good person can find themselves in a bad situation and become preoccupied with trying to remain good. By trying to remain good all their energy goes into that and they become exhausted by the whole process. So, who do you mix with, what do you mix with and where is your bullshit detector located?
In your head, in your hands, in your spine, in your fingers; where do you feel that brown sludge of insincerity and more significantly what can you do about it?
Here’s something you may not know. You can alter your state and manipulate your own pressures and sensings by the power of your mind. Yes it’s true. The only place that you have absolute dominion is within your own empire, that part of you that is physically defined by your body and electro-magnetically defined by the extent and composition of your thought field. You write your own ticket, you create your own reality based upon the understandings that you have of the situation you are in.
Try this:
1. Picture yourself in an empty room.
2. Listen to the sound of the empty room.
3. Place your awareness in the palms of your hands.
4. Move your awareness to your cheeks, tongue and the back of your neck.
5. How does that room sound?
6. How do your cheeks, tongue and neck feel?
7. Take a deep breath, hold it in and release it gently.
8. Place your palms flat at your hips and move them slowly in concentric circles, the left anti clockwise, the right clockwise.
9. How do the palms of your hands feel?
10. Make five concentric circles outwards.
11. Reverse the process, five circles inwards.
12. Register your state, your breathing, what your senses are telling you?
Do this and alter your state. This is a key that opens a door, beyond the door is a special place. Go inside and experience the world from that place. It changes, or rather your perception of it changes.
That is true natural magic. If you got it then use it. If you didn’t, that’s OK, there are techniques and exercises in abundance to bring about change in your life.
That which is without responds to that which is within. A crude example of this is that you may encounter a smacked up junkie in the street and cross to the other side of the street because your instinct picks up on their volatility. Their inner state has made itself known to you at a subliminal level and you respond accordingly. This is true of all things, whatever your inner process it produces a corresponding sequence of reactions around you. This is how you define your world or your reality and why it is different for each of us.
The trap is to see only the subjective view that this allows, you are then disconnected from the bigger picture, the old wood for the trees argument of pop psychology. If you become immersed in your own subjectivity you will never see outside the bars of your own cage. We all live within paradigms that shift and alter according to the external input we receive, we become the creatures of circumstance and our lives defined by things we have no control over. This is why it is important to meditate once in a while, free yourself of the burdens of the day to day mundanity. Allow the disinfecting influence of new knowledge and new ideas to flush your mind. This is where we can all help one another. What I see is different to what you see, what I grasp is different to what you grasp but collectively we may grasp a greater purchase upon the whole.
