CHAPTER FIVE
September 1st, 2024 Expectations of how Life should be will trap you in existence
QUESTIONS
Where is the story not yet written, or the existence not yet lived?
Questions that are close cousins to...
‘Where do we come from?’
‘Why are we here?’
‘Where do we go?’
All such questions lie outside of our rational mind - because the ego has no need to answer them. The questions, and their answers should we find them, seem to do nothing in support of our existence.
But they are generated and answered by...
Life. Which is the infinitude of all possible existence.
The novelist begins with a blank page, the seeker begins with a cleared mind. Both are uncluttered, still and silent, waiting upon...
…POTENTIAL
The symbiosis between Life and existence operates beyond our senses. In the ever-constant arising and ceasing every billionth of a micro-second, every thought, action, and formation of matter is a potential.
Then all the above Life questions fold into just one question: What decides a potential to actualize? Or put another way, what is the cause of everything?
The answer to this question will not be a sequence of words, they are only of existence. The answer lies with Life, the potential seed pod.
It means that although we cannot articulate an answer, we can access it.
But we should be aware that access equals reciprocating cause, such is the absolute symbiosis between existence and Life. (f)
Before cause, there is decision, which gives rise to intention.
If you have been reading the previous chapters you will know intention, or a lack of it, is at the core of how we live our existence. To access the seed pod of potential, we must give our existence over to Life. As the Green Jade book puts it: ‘We make an Intention to prioritize Life over Existence’
When the idea for a story arises in our mind, it is the actualization of Life potential. If we then want to open that idea and write the story, we would be well advised to seek out that seed pod, sometimes called ‘the muse’.
Because as Life, speaking in the introduction to the story ‘When we read The Green Jade Book’* says...
It is my story. The fact is all life stories are mine; they just seem to be yours.
Life is speaking here of existence (life) both actual and imagined, making no distinction between what we live and what we imagine in our story telling.
Life potential is neutral.
It is our interaction with Life, or lack of it, that constructs existence.
* 'When we read The Green Jade Book' by Roman Yutso. Available on Amazon.
CHANGE
In chapter two under Humanity, I wrote: If we humans and our sentient cousins are going to survive into the future years and generations, there will have to be a great change. There will be an upheaval in the way we exist on this planet.
The constructs of current societies; political, economic, social or religious are not going to make those changes necessary to avoid major suffering, and the possible extinction of ourselves and our species cousins.
However powerful and distant they seem from ordinary daily lives of us they are nevertheless made up of us, not a different species, and live with the same Existence entrapment.
So, how do we overcome this self-made entrapment.
By seeking the answer to the question: Where is the existence not yet lived?
It is as yet a Life potential.
To change from potential to actualization there has to be a decision made. In the relationship between existence and Life only we, humanity, can make decisions; and that leads us to intention.
However we approach the fundamental question of Being, if we are sincere, it will always bring us to search our Intention because…
…It is our intention that causes Life to manifest existence. (f)
The question. ‘What kind of existence do we want?’ depends on ‘what sum of Life over existence do we follow’. What end of the spectrum (in Ch. 4) are we.
RENUNCIATION
Renunciation is a strong word. It needs to be. Our intention needs the determination it evokes.
In a tightly packed bookshelf, compaction is total, not even a cigarette paper can get between the books! But if only one thin book is removed the whole shelf changes. Not only can air passage between the books, but each book can now be removed without a struggle.
It is the same for our Existence-compaction, we begin by changing one small compaction habit. And stop collecting more. “Easily said”, you may reasonably observe, not easy to do.
"The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell". Simone Weil
I’ve always had a love for books, having at one time shelves full of them that I just ‘couldn’t’ part with, until there was something else...
...with a stronger pull.
Thus began the process both of letting go of books - and Existence.
The only pull stronger than existence is Life.
It initiates our birth, and draws us along days and nights, months and years, and calls us out from the temporariness of existence.
Eventually bringing us home.
EVIDENCE
Your life is the evidence of your intention.
Such evidence doesn't have to do with what's in your head; what you think. You will reasonably say, ‘but I can only think and have reasons and desires within the world of Existence’.
To make a radical change we have to recognize that such reasoning is of the self, the rational ego mind, the servant of existence that has over time become the master of Existence.
Intention as proposed here, lies deep in the heart separate from language, thought, hopes and desires. It is Life at the core of who you are, you own it, only you can change it. (f)
That can only be done by addressing Life directly, such that Life touches Life within our core, within the heart.
It is in the heart that symbiosis operates, and how potential may be reached.
In the course of human history there have been in each era people whose intention has opened them such that they have become Life fully present in existence. Their approach and language have been of their time and culture, differences that cause judgement and misinterpretation - a history of prejudice, denial and often accusation.
The better known have been buried beneath interpretations comfortable to Existence. They include those upon whom we have imposed all the main religions. And atheisms that assert such ‘Life fully present’ is a fantasy.
SUFFERING
Suffering, whether it be the pain of sickness or injury, the emotional agony of grief, or the constant background feeling of incompleteness, is the Prema facia reminder of existence.
It is through knowing suffering’s confinement that we become aware of that which transcends it. For only Life which is greater than existence lies beyond suffering.
Background Interference
Everything we achieve within the confines of Existence eventually gets blurred by the background interference of incompleteness.
For the simple reason that it can only ever be temporary, and we know it! It is knowing that causes the discomfort of the controlling ego-self.
But we can have an existence without that incomplete feeling by recognizing that the core of existence is Life, and Life pulses through the heart.
As soon as we place our attention into the heart, the discomfort eases, because we experience beyond the confines of the controlling mind.
The Life experience being timeless overcomes the limited timebound experience of the ego.
A continued Life intention exercised in this way leads to the condition of…
JOY
Here again, are some words from ‘Consolations’ by David Whyte. ‘Joy is a meeting place of deep intentionality and of self-forgetting. The bodily alchemy of what lies inside us in communion with what formally seemed outside…’
Joy is to happiness as the ocean is to the waves that lap up on the shore of existence.
Our seeking to be happy. while an understandable wish that counters the background discomfort, is at the same time revealing of that (unhappy) incompleteness.
It works, of course, for a while. [If it didn’t, we would abandon our striving for it]. But like those waves it has no permanence, and in that, it keeps us on a treadmill of hope.
It is an Existence habit that has been exploited mercilessly by western cultures – and spreading east – to enhance our striding toward ever greater accumulation and compaction.
Have you ever done something that in essence was almost nothing? Like taking a walk in a park for no reason, or stood looking at the moon, the sea, a field, the setting sun, or just stopped for a few minutes – and become aware of a feeling accompanied by the thought, ‘why don’t I do this, it’s so…’
…Simplicity, stillness, silence.
Habits, that if done for no other reason, will bring joy, and right there may be your way out of Existence compaction - and a realization of Life.
People who have lost a life partner will often say, ‘what I miss are the times of just doing nothing together’. Movies, theater, holidays, etc.; all ways of being happy [and they have joy (Life) woven in there]. But…
…it is the silent communion with Life-Love that was and is the bedrock of …
RELATIONSHIP
There are as many reasons why people get together in couples as there are people, but only one enduring cause, and that is Life itself.
That’s not to say we cannot make a good relationship based on many and any facets of our being.
Folks who love hiking get together to hike and find such companionship they marry and have children who eventually hike with them. People with compatible views of life get along so well they become partners, and so on.
Society is founded upon such wholesome commitments, that can, and sometimes do, get overtaken by Life/Love. It is when that happens that the realization of silence, stillness, and simplicity dawns. Hence the bereaved’s reflection on times of simply doing nothing.
There are also those whose relationship is with Life, folks who seek the spiritual path for its own sake; mostly religious, but not exclusively so
Such a way is not easy, because the body and mind have to give way to the heart’s intent, and in the beginning, in defense of the body, it rails against the perceived deprivations required.
A third arising of Love occurs when we find a reciprocating Life connection immediately upon meeting another person.
One in which both are owned by Love beyond the self-desire.
The subsequent relationship is not necessarily smooth going, because it challenges all the accumulations of both partners' ego controls. It requires a substantial letting go of our self-perception.
Both partners have to let-go into Love’s demand.
May you be well, may your days and nights be filled with Life.
Comments and questions - sucinno@hotmail.com Subject: Nearlife.
(f) Footnotes
But we should be aware that access equals reciprocating cause, such is the absolute symbiosis between existence and Life. (f)
This simply means, the stronger our reach into Life, the more Life will determine (cause) changes to our existence – reducing it to its essentials as it ‘opens up’ to existence potentials, the possibilities inherent in The Near Life Experience.
It is our intention that causes Life to manifest existence. (f)
Decision making (causation) taking place at the ‘edge’ of Life-pulsation, is the operation of the symbiotic relationship between Life and existence. At the quantum level, conditions are simultaneously ontological and epistemological, both of matter [existence] and the field from which it arises [Life]
Intention then, is what we hold, anti omnia, (above all else) that determines the nature of existence.
It is Life at the core of who you are, you own it, only you can change it. (f)
This is the ‘originating being’. The egoic-self constructed around the capture that arrived with your inception.
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