Last update : 4 / 1 / 2021
2 / 5 / 2019
In the paradise of modern Western culture
"You are so nice that I wonder how you have survived so far."
With such thoughts, one might almost wonder if we should not actually be mean to live well.
9 / 2 / 2019
Ignorant, but free of choosing
There is never any mistake made in good faith, but only choices, which will, of course, have favorable or unfortunate consequences in the short term, then favorable or unfortunate in the medium term according to the same choices, and still favorable or unfortunate in the long term still according to the very same choices. And it goes without saying that in between many other decisions would have also been taken.
In fact, we can only imagine the immediate consequences of our choices and without always knowing their outcome. So we never make any mistakes in everyday life because any choice may be favorable at one time and detrimental at another. Life doesn't allow to know it, and it means that it's an experience worth living because truly speaking we never know, in other words, we know absolutely nothing. But that will never prevent anybody of always choosing the very best and, of course, regret it afterward, in order to finally rejoice, and so on till the end of time.
The mind never gets tired of that kind of strategy, and it even seems that sometimes this idiot find it quite funny.
10 / 1 / 2019
Excessive, but not that much
The power, not to say "totalitarianism" of the mind over consciousness cannot be better expressed by these very well-known Georges Orwell's words : "Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. War is peace. The lie passed into history and became truth." In other words, truth is lie... in our personal story.
The mind has to be a slave of thinking and a whole system of belief while considering that it is in a state of slavery that it is free, and obviously free of thinking and believing in what pleases it. It also has to be ignorant since it is always in search of knowledge, understanding and truths from which it draws its own power and strength. And of course, it has to be at war and perpetual conflicts with itself or "the others", war and conflict that produce many defense mechanisms and so somehow provide kind security and peace. And finally, all its personal truths, what it really believes in, are only illusions or lies as soon as it practices a sort of introspective meditation and psychoanalysis. They cannot be at best more than interpretations and points of view, personal opinions, if not preconceived ideas and bias.
Very fortunately, the mind is also able to reason intelligently and be honest when it no longer seeks to be right, but to become conscious. It remains to be seen, of course, what to be conscious really means. In other words, how can we bring consciousness into the thinking process in order to open the mind ? As a matter of fact, we cannot only spend our time exploring consciousness as such where there is nothing anyway, not a thing. Consciousness has to enlighten the mind and its functioning if we really want to spiritualize our own life. Spirituality should not be a quest that excludes daily living, but the contrary. It should not be exclusive, but inclusive, that is to say integrating everything we are, do and perceive.
2 / 1 / 2020
Free to be free to be free to be free... and so on
If we want to speak of "spiritual awakening" a lot more natural, obvious and effective than desired and illusory, or really non-ordinary, we will find it without any doubt in our freedom of choosing by taking the sane and mature responsibility of its consequences. It will, of course, be a choice done in complete ignorance of its middle and long term effects, but life, as far as humans know it, is always a succession of voluntary or involuntary choices on a short term basis anyway. We may think to be very smart, but as we all know, our intelligence is also quite limited, especially in the prediction of coming events, which depends on too many unknown factors.
Is that really a problem ? Of course not, since life itself is always a succession of conscious or unconscious choices resulting from willpower or conditioning, kind of spontaneous reflexes programmed by many means, in particular our education and culture. At any given moment of time, we can obviously change the course of events if we want to, and then still change again this new course of events, and so on forever till death at the very least. That is called Karma, "action", and so reaction or relation of cause and effect.
The absence of free will presumed to be true by neuroscience and some Neo gurus is the outcome of misunderstanding and complete lack of observation, when it's not a pretext or excuse to do as we please or deny our responsibility towards life and ourselves, which can naturally happen when we are, for instance, overwhelm by some events or very tired, if not completely fed up with the world we live in. That denial is not bad per se, it's nothing more than the expression of defense mechanism, instinct of survival and weakness, i.e. quite natural processes. But if we watch carefully how life and the mind really work, we will realize very easily that we only don't have, in fact, the choice of not choosing our thoughts, and therefore our actions too.
That doesn't have to be proved since we need to watch attentively only one of our thoughts and see if we agree or disagree with it, and then watch the outcome of that choice. It's quite obvious that this agreement or disagreement will change the course of our thoughts and actions. Anyone who practices seriously meditation, that is to say "watching mental phenomenon and let it go", experience that very natural process. To agree or disagree with one thought doesn't mean, of course, thinking even more about that thought, but just using consciousness, the faculty of being conscious, watching and knowing, in order to decide to carry on with that thought or simply drop it because it seems interesting or completely useless, right or wrong, good or bad if you will. In other words, consciousness is able to evaluate the intelligence and moral quality of a thought without relying on the thinking process itself.
It's a mental process that brings into play a consciousness able to "judge" the inherent value of a thought, that's what common sense or conscience are all about. And since that mental process is independent of the thinking process, but only able to change it at will, it cannot be observed in the brain as neuroscience tries to do by technical means. We cannot distinguish it from the thinking process and working of the brain that can be watched with technical apparatus because it always goes along effectively or without intervention with the thinking process.
In order to sum up that topic that may seem very complicated or too sophisticated to make sense, although we live constantly with all those mental mechanisms, the thinking process and the mind itself are obviously conditioned, if not a mass of programming at the scale of the universe, but consciousness that goes along with cannot be conditioned. And it's in this peculiar fact that spiritual liberation is really possible.
The main problem about the topic of free will is that free will can be illusory and effective, both are possible. It's always available, but only if we want to, that is to say if we choose to use willpower, otherwise we can live and fortunately very well survive with kind of automatic pilot, natural programming and conditioning more or less unconscious. And that's a choice, free will and willpower or conditioning and no free will ! Truly speaking, free will and willpower are only useful in critical situations because consciousness will usually choose to let the mind working according to its norms and conditioning since it is its function.
In any case, the mind leads our actions, but only if consciousness agrees with its intentions otherwise a conflict will occur between both, and so the beginning of psychological problems. In other terms, it simply means that if consciousness disagrees with the thoughts and decisions of the mind, and the mind doesn't want to listen to consciousness and what it knows about it in its own functioning, i.e. common sense and its conscience, which makes a clear difference between right and wrong, only the mind is going to suffer from that conflict.
Consciousness cannot suffer no matter what the mind chooses and actions will be. The function of the mind is to react for the better or worst, enjoy or suffer, the one of consciousness is to watch, know and reveal the inherent values of a specific mind functioning. In such a spiritual quest that nobody wishes to hear about nowadays, a non-ordinary experience called "spiritual awakening" is totally meaningless because everything the mind manifests cannot be ordinary anymore as soon as it holds on to the presence of consciousness watching.
And that also means that the origin of suffering and dissatisfaction is not to be found as psychology believes in past events, but in the mind when it rejects its conscience and power or suggestion. No need to say that it's a very subtle mind game because the clear difference between right and wrong is far from obvious for the mind in some circumstances. But that's how life becomes fascinating and truly spiritual since the mind can always ask about that matter in all its thoughts, and if it doesn't realize that most of them express selfishness, greed and hypocrisy, it will not be able nevertheless to prevent itself to realize that it is a big liar. So what to do if not to stop being selfish, greedy and hypocrite, and see where it leads. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it will certainly lead finally to the exploration of the silence of mind and consciousness, which will make the experience of life a lot more than non-ordinary.
So let us say that spiritual awakening can be found in free will, willpower and responsibility, a pretty weird concept in our time and Neo spirituality, which pretends to be free among many other things from dogma and responsibility, practically speaking, what are we going to choose ? First of all, we will choose to stop suffering for futile reasons, or in other words, for mental phenomenon, which are not necessary to simply live our life according to our past destiny. And that means that this choice will lead to kind of extreme simplicity, so simple that we could say : "Thy will be done" and not mine. Isn't it funny or maybe pretty strange that our supreme choice and responsibility is to renounce to free will, and yet without renouncing to the responsibility of its consequences ?
We can think, believe whatever we like and write books about the reality or illusion of free will, what really matters is only the outcome of our choices since we cannot prevent ourselves to suffer or enjoy their consequences. And to choose that free will is an illusion is obviously still a choice since we usually think exactly the opposite. And it's surely not the most intelligent choice because it makes us organic robots, and obviously nobody wants to be kind of machine. Our daily life is already quite enough repetitive that we surely don't want it to be completely mechanical or predetermined by some kind of cosmic intelligence that wouldn't care of our desires and personal aspirations for a better life.
Whatever neuroscience or Neo awakening gurus tell us, we are humans with all their creativity, sensitivity, qualities and weaknesses, without mentioning our real intelligence that we should not forget too, and that's not going to change under the pretext that free will would be an illusion, nor science is going to change the game of life played according to natural and social rules, or transform the cosmic order. But the concept of "no free will" so trendy today, if not very much sponsored and welcome, is maybe not about free will at all, let alone science and spirituality. It may only be about control and brainwashing, something very much necessary unfortunately to change for the better our civilization without too many conflicts.
We like it or not, our crazy civilization relying on consumerism is over, and we are in full transition to a new one, we can hope, less stupid. The idea of "no free will" simply means "take it for granted". Anyway we are not in charge of this new civilization, although our culture tries to make us believe the contrary with spiritual concepts such as cocreator and cocreating, which are, by the way, totally contradictory with the absence of free will. So what to do in a world of complete confusion where we are continually fed with contradictory concepts and where we can really do what is only possible and legal ? Just to keep sane and search for wisdom because it's totally free of charge, and moreover, we don't need to destroy anything to find it. By definition, wisdom is non-violent, and so it calls for intelligence and right solutions. And in order to start with, the best solution would be to get out of the confusion created by our Neo spirituality and culture, or at the very least try to with non-violence. That would be the expression of a real spiritual awakening more practical than a non-ordinary experience that serves no purpose, except pretending to be a guru and becoming kind of funny egomaniac.
4 / 1 / 2021
Radical, but not easy
If one seeks peace and happiness without knowing it... like everybody, it’s quite enough to be at peace and happy knowingly, but surely not anymore like everybody.
The mind has its own karmic characteristics and whims, but when it knows what it’s searching for, a peaceful state of mind, it can only find it. It’s the great magician... for better or worse.
The question is to know what really is at the origin of such a state of mind. That's all about psychology, then spirituality, nothing mysterious in truth, but a spirituality, which has to be practiced seriously.
There is no more serious question than those concerning peace and happiness. Can we sincerely imagine that the answers can be treated lightly without knowledge and meditation ?
This knowledge doesn’t come from non-ordinary experiences, but from studies and practices.