Opinion – bleh.

Once in a while, without my permission, I acquire a distaste for a word.  The word, what it means, how it is used and the effects it creates turn sour for me.  Currently, it is the word opinion.

If I look up this word in the dictionary I find the following definition:  a personal view, attitude or appraisal.  As I am understanding, this refers to the way a human being has calculated their reality view based on line of entry, experiences and knowledge absorption.  This definition sounds benign and neutral but whenever I encounter the word opinion,  I feel a something other.  As yet, I am still exploring what it is but the word opinion whenever I hear it used, wafts me a negative breeze.  I sense a dismissal and disrespect. 

Oftentimes this word, in reference to someone (it’s your opinion – or you are opinionated), strikes me as a belittling emanation.  The patience, the silence of listening, considering and exploring the offered knowledge with  a sense of gratitude that this other has made different choices and therefore possibly has valuable information, points to a respect generally forgotten when the word opinion is used.  Consequently, we dismiss each other’s information (for that is what an opinion is) far too quickly.  I am writing this of course, with complicity.

In a quest for its purest form, the word opinion means nothing more than an idea whose investigative qualities have not yet been completely researched.  In contrast to facts or even theories who have been granted time and study, most personal opinions do not undergo a deep scrutiny.  Once in a while, we hear someone say, it is an educated opinion.  In this, someone puts trust in the offered opinion confident, it has undergone careful consideration.  They respect the source of the information.

This word has been around for many years and since language is a living entity, it has veered off its original stand.

Currently I am wondering if we use this word to deny another’s view entering into us.  When we call someone opinionated, are we not distancing ourselves from their energy?  Are we not backing away from whatever they are offering? 

Although opinion defined is a concluded learning discerned from a life experience, its neutrality has gone missing.  For there,  hiding inside the word opinion, is our conviction.    When transmitting our ideas, our depth of conviction is included in our opinion.  Disagreeing with another,  in the play of sharing information with each other, we have not understood what is being said or the other’s chosen words differ from our usage of language.  We have not communicated. 

We have arrived at an opposite conclusion and with good reason, cannot dismiss our information. Especially if new information will shake the foundation we have long relied upon.  Instead we dismiss the other’s opinion by reaffirming our own conviction. When we do this, by avowing our own, we also covertly say, I have no respect for your information, a disrespect which flares up the other to protect their knowledge.

We think the other is wrong and we are right.  Correctly, this could be an accurate estimation or we could be wrongly convinced there is no possibility their information is valuable to us.  Certainly once convinced of this,  a separation occurs and now, apart from each other, in our corners, we protest indignantly, tightly grasping our own information. 

We do not give in lightly since our information, regardless of its validity, has been accepted as a way to create well-being in our lives.

Throughout our life we have been disappointed with false information and now we take license relying more and more on our own subjective views, suspicious of others.  We choose authorities to whom we listen more closely, but generally,  our friends fall into a new category, opinionated.  When a disagreement arises, we stand for our conviction and dig in deeper, explaining it more fully to the other.   

This escalates our energies and usually, we learn nothing from each other.

It is only when we enter into silence, listening with a question of what’s being said,  pausing our information (after all it will not be lost)  can we explore our friend’s information.  If this is not accomplished, we end up in debate, in an impotency which will not solve a crash of data between two minds.

Presently, I am unskillful in recognizing the moment I am trapped in debate.  I forget to stop presenting my idea.  I forget to paraphrase a question to ascertain if I have understood what’s being said. 

When it is not an abstract opinion, it is easy to pause and consult Google. However, abstraction by its nature, is challenging to express correctly to another being. Google does not settle these crashes.

My own passionate conviction prevents me from choosing a pause.  Happily, I am in practice to learn a better way of communicating and as I end this, I renew what I know helps communication – remembering to pause.

Remembering Me

Hello you.

I have forgotten to connect with you again, haven’t I? It seems this lesson in remembering you consistently goes forgotten.

I wonder why? This feeling, wondrous, when we do connect is complete, nary a corner wanting. Yet, again and again I forget to remember you and learn to miss you.

I hear you whisper, your voice never rising above a whisper, “It does not matter you forgot, it is important you remembered.”

Your words embrace me in love and the truth rings out, love is not outside but within. Taking in a breath, we become one.

My mirror recedes and stops haunting me with information gathered. Reality cannot be changed in the past. Once written, it slips into yesteryear, inaccessible to rewriting.

There is no other way it can be.

The law of the universe smiles, winks and shrugs its shoulders. Nothing to do with me, my child, no one asked for my agreement or yours. Relief enters and shows me a new plan. A never-ending-forward, a never-beginning-backward and me, in the pause, defined as presence, dreaming of what’s next.

This life, this ceaseless learning, this solitude of being, temporary and eternal, a paradox.

I Something You …

When the idealist arrives on earth, he is full of innocence and love.  He is nature’s solution in changing the insanity resulting from humanity’s primitive phase.  Unfortunately, all too soon, he awakens into what he has emerged and is overwhelmed by what he sees.  He is disappointed by the harsh comparison of what reality shows him and the world of sanity and love existing within.

His confusion at what he finds and what should be pierces his heart. As the less awake ones in their ignorance repeatedly wound him, he tumbles into depression.  Knowing himself in relation to the world would soothe his suffering but instead, his lack of understanding  sharpens earth’s betrayal.

He is the solution to implement.  He is the canary who sings a mournful song warning of the expanding poisonous gas which will suffocate everyone.  He is the visionary who has come to guide the status quo into a more beneficial forward.  He is the gentle soul who sees behind the curtain and exposes the apparent hypocrisy.  He is the saviour (small s) who is destined to guide ignorance to wisdom.

Sadly, this goes unexplained to him.  He is pressed down by the weight of the hate and idiocy rampant in his people.  He becomes impotent as the depth of the problem is revealed to him.

As he ages, he is overcome by what he is here to heal. 

It is appropriate, his sadness, it is part of the revelation.  Not realizing he is the water to soothe the fires burning out of control in people’s souls, he pulls the brakes on his fate and chooses to withdraw.

Paradoxically, it is his humility that blinds him to his relevance. 

Believing the evidence of an exposed detailed overview pointing to unsolvable problems, he wonders, what impact can one person have?

He builds a thick wall around him in an effort to shut out the insanity.  He forgets that evil exists  in this world because idealists like him, in their disappointment, have suppressed their input.  He feels alone and powerless as he looks upon the greatness of the unrestrained evil.

He has not grasped he is one of a legion of others who have also come.  Others who face the same mountain to climb.  Others who struggle to lead humanity to a new paradigm. Others who as yet have not understood who they are and others whose intuition have already discovered the truth.  Others who cheer for his awakening to strengthen the energy of the solution. He is far from alone.

He perceives the significance of a small act to be futile and retreats into stagnation, in danger of erasing himself completely out of existence. 

Efforts in words and explanations cannot penetrate his disillusionment; validation of being a healer is a solitary decision. Humanity loses many healers due to this anomaly.

Yet, here I am (even while thinking my small act will be futile) knocking on his wall, hoping light will infiltrate his dark mistaken identity. 

Sadly, most likely, these words will be dismissed as just another lie in a sea of untruths, but never mind, I keep practicing faith.  He is of the utmost importance and well worth my efforts.

Can you handle the truth?

No one is getting out of this alive.  Each of us are here only for a short visit.  Since this is obvious, would not the inevitable be for everyone to simply accept the truth without fanfare? Contrarily, we handle this truth by ignoring it and making it a taboo in sociability. We choose to not think about it. Who can blame us, it sucks!

Although death is an unknown void,  the evidence is all around us, dying has many terrorizing known faces.  From what we have seen, we already know instinctively by the age of four or so, dying sucks.  Most humans, upon realizing this, suppress the truth of it and pretend, hoping that the horrors of dying will bypass them.  Sure once in a while, the truth sharply stings but in general, the better a human can suppress the truth of dying, the more successful they are.

However, if you have a high awareness unable to suppress truths, you discover your have intense feelings and depression suddenly has made its home in you.  For you, letting go of dying’s truth is impossible and life becomes threatening and miserable. 

And of course, the higher the awareness someone has of this truth, the more thoughts of dying haunt them.  Nothing someone can say will change their focus.  There is no doubting it, they know the truth. The certainty of pain is one hundred percent.  Arguing just reveals the foolishness of discussion.  The only appropriate reaction in the face of an irrefutable destiny,  is to, as best can be, protect  themselves.  In an effort to minimize the odds of certain death and pain, protection  is the logical choice.

The next step finds these high awareness beings well entrenched in the state of fear. Whether you accept it or not, protection is a child of fear.

The others, the ones who can suppress this truth, impervious to any existential crisis, run our world by default.  Unfortunately, that they can suppress dying’s truth, proves they are not the sharpest tacks in  the box.  That they are in charge is a default, a consequence of the aware minds, who unable to suppress the truth of reality,  become paralyzed by the horrors they see.   As they recoil from the horror, the running of this world is left to the ones who will not acknowledge reality in its entirety.

Paradoxically, the aftermath is a world made even more dangerous because the ones who can suppress the truth are, by default,  in charge.  They deny any crisis and keep solving problems in the same primitively selfish and violent way causing the intelligent to withdraw even further into safety.

Curiously, total suppression wins you the top rung!  Yes, that’s right.  To reach the highest level, one must achieve complete denial of suffering in others and pretend one is omnipotent.

In the meantime, nature pumps out more and more of the aware ones in an attempt to temper the problem.  Nature in her wisdom realizes the progress of consciousness is inhibited by the suppressors and through evolutionary response, begets more possible aware ones.  Nature has a vested interest in humans.  They are the creatures who have attained the highest consciousness state so far.

Assuredly, awareness could solve the problem but blocking the way, the paradox stands, the solution causes another problem.  Awareness  cannot suppress truth.  It cannot lie to itself.  It is sensually alert and records correctly what is observed. Reality is not comfortable.  Reality is as is. 

The confusion the paradox creates, blows these aware minds dysfunctional and perhaps, as it has been in some cases, it is not a bad thing.  A breakdown, if survived,  brings a new skill which can then better process the fear that being highly aware, causes. Buddha was one of these beings.

What is the skill?  Letting go of whatever cannot be changed. Death is inevitable, the foreseen will come.  It is easy to see current reality and probable possibilities.  The secret is that you cannot protect yourself from the destined pain and that’s that.  What’s more, constant rehearsing of the dread coming,  intensifies the suffering.  One dies a thousand deaths in suffering whereas in giving up rehearsing and realizing we actually die only once, we are free to live.

It sucks severely but everyone and everything you love will be lost.  That’s the stark reality of this life.  Sure one can force a halt to all of this which means the very thing feared will come at an earlier date or then, one can lament being born which in truth is insanity because here you are, born!  Something else that cannot be changed unless you change it by shooting yourself does not erase the fact you were born.

Acceptance of what cannot be changed brings a new truth, the secret of loss.  The antidote, accepting what cannot be changed, teaches you to stop engaging in the end and focus instead, on being grateful that you can feel so strongly about a loss.   It means you love greatly and love is the salve to calm the horrors of this world. It is the reason you are here; to ensure continuance aided by love’s force.

But the pain of love is challenging and realizing everything loved will be lost is an ultimate betrayal of love.  

We come to an impasse for what can we do but hide away and wait, in fearful anticipation, for what is destined to befall us.  We stop seeing or hearing the beauty calling out to us, prepared to comfort us.  We order ourselves to stop taking stupid chances where we may be hurt.  We build ourselves a cocoon.  Love hurts!

Inside our intellectual cocoons we hide away waiting for a savior.  Someone who will protect us from the pain of this existence.  Someone who will transport us to a delicate place where we feel bliss.  We wish with all of our being for the answer, for the savior.

Fervently, with ardor we wish our wish to come true and the universe eventually whispers, “Behold, the savior awaits in you.”

The Paradox

I always do my best.  It took me some time to get to this truth but without doubt now, I know I always do my best.

No one can judge whether any of my best is actually my best.  Since I am always trying to do something, since I never know whether my effort will hit a prerequisite measurement, my trying, my effort is innocent.  It is merely a reaching to accomplish a something. 

But suddenly, someone screams, “Not good enough.”  Halting me in my innocent effort and hurling me into not good enough.  I was not good enough.  Yes, I missed the mark, yet again!

And then they say, “You can do better.” 

Without hesitation, this message was delivered to me over and over again.  Slowly, eventually, I believe them.  And yes, there were times I surprised someone here and there with my talented whatever but even then, they would say, not good enough and you know you can do better.

“I am not good enough and I can do better.” Okay, that seems clear.

But because I was trying to be better, the message I receive is that my trying is not good enough and quickly I lose faith in any of my efforts.  Eventually convinced my effort is always not good enough, I become angry with my ineptness.  Trying becomes tedious and painful.  I look for ways that my trying will give me less pain.  Consequently, I avoid trying. 

In our society this is known as procrastination.  The result of avoiding trying becomes procrastination.

Time passes and  by and now, others judge me lazy because I have not tried well enough.  If only you would just try better! 

Excuse me?  Aren’t you the ones who told me over and over again, that my trying was not good enough?

And now that I know my trying is not good enough, now that I believed what you have told me all these years, you admonish me for being lazy?

Interesting.

Adding insult to injury, now you tsk-tsk me for believing you?

Haven’t you insisted that you know best at knowing how I miss the mark.  Constantly reminding me of the measurements that keep me firmly assigned to continuous self-improvement. 

But you are right, there is a bigger lesson here.  The message I am giving  myself.

By accepting these measurements and continuously leaping to reach them, I imprison myself in a perfection cycle that insults my true self.

My true self does not need improvement.  It is perfection itself.  It does however need to evolve and evolving is quite different than improvement.

Improvement always needs a prerequisite measurement while evolving has its own agenda.

An agenda that is created in the moment as it arrives.

The Mind on Fear

My most difficult day on earth was the day I realized the what I had emerged into,  was constantly changing.  Instantly upon this discovery, waves of fearful possibilities overwhelmed me.  Nothing was for sure, everything was in flux and all that I loved would eventually be lost.

Fear rose in me like fire and I knew terror!

I became obsessed, possessed by fear.  Unable to shake the long shadow of its cold embrace, I became paralyzed by analysis.  Shuddering as I experienced the truth of fear’s promise, nearly drowning at four, losing  my aunt, cousin and sister, seduced by a sexual predator,  I saw pain everywhere and the horrifying truth?, safety was temporary and mostly an illusion.  With the evidence my ravaged innocence bestowed upon me, trusting was impossible and every day was excruciatingly difficult.  Now aware of the thing in the bushes who snarled it would get me next time, each second was spent hating my existence.

Fear became my guardian and a ferocious protector who eventually drove me insane with its imprisonment.  This is not a metaphor, fear’s tyrannical pressure hurled me into psychosis.

Fortunately, in that state of insanity, shattered and lost,  I was unable to do anything except listen.   In that significant gap of non-thinking, my mind could no longer function and  in the silence of a cloudless sky, the universe spoke to me for the first time.  Panicked, terrified of what was next, I heard her suggest, “Go brush your teeth my child.” 

With my intellect shattered in pieces, her suggestion in the face of my dilemma would have been preposterous but in my total collapse,  I had no better argument for the logic supporting her advice.   In that moment, in that hush, brushing my teeth was perfectly appropriate.

Slowly she taught me I could no longer exist in the status quo.  She showed me that living life five minutes at a time was the antidote to my fear. She soothed me while she showed me that no, my mind was not me but a mere tool in need of a guide.  My mind was not my true self.  My true self was yet to be born.

This passage I was undergoing, was the onset of an evolutionary liberation and paradoxically, the I, who was hearing the universe, was in charge of birthing my true self.  If my intellect had been intact at that time, I would have wondered who the I was that was listening.

There was no mistaking the love in her words.   It was fun to hear her logic, refreshing, exciting.  She led me to the teachings I needed.  Although perhaps, it is more accurate to say, I led myself to those teachings.  You see, her visions of me rising from the ashes, all the while,  persisting that it was I that was  in charge of my true self’s epic emergence, was intriguing.  I was being reborn but in the same form.  It was majestic but this rebirth was invisible to all but me.

Eventually I guided myself to the practice which would maximize this emergence of my true self, meditation.  Today, I am dedicated to meditation since there are no doubts to its benefits.  No longer the lion, my fearing mind has stopped roaring protests at this life and lies like a lamb at my feet.

My true self, presence, does not entertain thoughts of the future unless they pertain to solving an actual problem.  I do not address possibilities unless they are directly connected to something in the present and recognize then ignore problems that the logical odds say are likely to not happen. Of course, at the same time, I know anything could be. I count the ones I cannot affect.

The universe taught me fear is actually an imaginative talent of mine, gone awry. Fear had perverted my imaginative talent.

There was great relief in learning this.  In my most vulnerable place, where everyone could betray me and did, in the silence of this shocking revelation of loneliness, the universe’s voice reached me.

My noisy fearful mind now broken was given a taste of how love rather than fear inspires a more intelligent intellect to be birthed.

Yesterday, four teenagers stabbed another teen to death in bright daylight in front of his mother.  Upon hearing this, everyone said, “What were they thinking?.”  I did not.  I knew their rage was a branch of their fear.  Fear my friends, causes stupid thinking which leads to idiotic choices.  Love however,  clears the channels allowing a clarity of thought that aspires to genius.

Love’s nature is nurture while fear’s is destructive. It is an ancient war between fear and love. The universe showed me that love needs to stop fighting with fear and you know what? when I did, fear slowly faded away into my breath and poof! – was gone.

In the world of best …

In the world of best, everyone was dissatisfied and in need of love.   In the world of best, the ruler was improvement.  No sooner had an improvement been successful, a new better improvement announced itself.  This ever looking for improvement meant there was always a condition to meet and since love has no conditions, everyone was yearning for love.

Well, on second thought, that is not exactly true, love does have one condition … there are to be no conditions.  Any condition is a form of control and love is unconditional.  If there is a condition, it is not love.  Therefore, love would always fade in the world of best since best was ever demanding a new condition.

It began by accident, here and there, when some, driven by an unexplained yearning would suddenly find themselves in a world of perfection where creativity did not judge.  Upon tasting this new world, the memory of this perfection would imprint a haunting longing in their hearts. They would then become dedicated in search of how to return to a world of perfection where once in a brief moment, they felt bliss.

Through exploration, they discovered, rather than measurement, spontaneity was the driving force. They were surprised when this bliss of perfection required no conditions to meet. They were stunned to learn trust was the prerequisite ticket into this new world; a trust this world could exist and belief in their ability to usher it in.

In this blissful dimension there was no better or best.  In the glory of perfection there was nowhere to go and sighing with ultimate relief, they cried, we are home! 

It was the next dimension of which the residents of the world of best dreamt and as they would say, the highest best.  A Golden Age promised to bring a second coming, the rapture.  Nonetheless, the ones who believed this world could be, were few. The majority bristled at this dream, yet too full of violence to understand the powerful concept of possibility. They were blind to the instructions floating about, available for anyone who stopped complaining and breathed in vulnerability.

Without doubt it was too wishy-washy, too woo-woo.   Nonetheless, the few who had spent even a brief moment in love’s paradigm, haunted by its memory, became convinced of its truth.

Unfortunately, it takes time for the memory to become a dedicated conviction of importance or even that the possibility could be made real.  Of course, this belief depended on the strength of what their imagination was focused upon. 

To create another world, a golden age dimension where love rules, a vulnerability is required.  A softness of being willing to melt and join the collective where there is no best.  It is the choice the universe offers when any being, despairing from the effects of the world of best, knocks on the door of sanctuary.

“Leave your ego behind, you can only enter without one.”

This next dimension was different and from within the world of best, it was considered better but upon arrival, there was no proclamation it was better although it did promise a fertility for increasing diversity.  Comparisons were no more and cares leaked out the pores of anyone’s skin who reached it.   

Accurately, however, it was nothing special; it was merely the next logical evolutionary step.