Soul_of_Shu wrote: ↑Tue Jun 14, 2022 6:19 am
The challenge then becomes
how to re-know that ever-present dynamic, and with those required lessons of incarnation acquired, leverage it to our collective benefit in the creative evolutionary play of Lila.
How? By following the
contradictions. To use the Matrix metaphor again - Neo in the first part had to follow a thread - he had to follow the white rabbit. Note that he didn't simply stay in his basement apartment and wait for the answer to drop from the air. He had to act. He saw the sign of the white rabbit and had to make an inner decision - to follow it. And this is nothing new. "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." Things can hardly be more explicitly stated than this. The Christ didn't say "stay in your basement apartment and wait for the oversoul to illuminate you when it decides you're ripe enough."
To move from the metaphorical to the concrete, we should find out what the white rabbit is in our living situation, not only as floating metaphor that never connects to anything real. And in the most general sense, the white rabbit in our dreamscape is - contradiction.
Please note how mutually supporting the facts are. What is thus stated is not some exotic idea that has nothing to do with all our experiences.
At the turn of the 20th century scientists were under the impression that they had practically figured Nature out. Only few details were left to be brushed out here and there. Yet it is precisely these minor details, which seemed like cosmetic cracks on the surface, which when
followed, led to entirely new worlds. Relativity and quantum mechanics turned the almost packaged and ready for the market picture of the Newtonian universe into bizarre beast beyond anything that 19th century scientists could have imagined.
Those who have trained for more systematic achievement of lucid dreams know that the main tool is called 'reality checks'. In our waking file we get in the habit to look for the consistent flow of reality. We should pay attention to things that we take for granted - like the fact that the clock arrow moves steadily. In our dreams things are often not consistent. When we look at our dream clock it often doesn't move of moves irregularly. When we have turned the reality checks into more deeply ingrained habits, these contradictions in our dreams make much greater impression on us and then we snap "I'm dreaming!" Just as in science, following the crack of contradiction leads us into a new world.
It's the same with spiritual matters. "The challenge how to re-know that ever-present dynamic" turns into the challenge to find the contradictions (which are only the point of departure, of course). I know that you have a favorite saying "With the fusion, the confusion ends". And although it is literally true when we consider the depth axis of reality, it actually leads to paralysis when we apply it only at the intellectual plane. This would be as if the scientists were to say "Let's just ignore these tiny discrepancies in the experimental data. They only cause confusion. We smear them out, fuse them and we're done." Or imagine that our dream self says "The clock moves irregularly - big deal, you're thinking too much. This thinking only confuses you. Stop thinking and you'll see how beautiful and fused everything is." Yes, 'fused' but strictly mired in the dream world.
Contradictions are like the border of a fractal.
At low iteration count we see a contradiction between the black and the colored area. Here one can intellectually say "Well, it's all one. You're confused because you focus on the fact that there are two different areas. Just
pretend that they are one and the same and all troubles will be gone." Yet, as we increase the iteration count and we focus on the borderline between the two, we discover a world beyond our wildest imagination.
Let's get back to concrete examples. What is this contradiction that we so readily sweep under the carpet? It is what we're talking about in the last few posts here. It is what we've talked about with Lou long ago. It is the inner contradiction that on one hand we want to simply flow merrily with the dream. We just want to lay back and watch a good movie. We don't want to feel responsible for anything, we simply give ourselves to the movie and trust that our protagonist will be taken wherever the dream ordains. On the other hand we feel that we can be active, that we can understand the flow and we can make a difference through navigating consciously.
Everyone feels on some level that this must be the case. Otherwise why would we be in a forum like this? We feel that there's something to be grasped about the nature of the dream flow, which potentially can lead to new ways of shaping it.
And here's the contradiction. It's almost a trend today to say something like "just follow your heart/oversoul/hormones". But isn't it plainly obvious that everyone is doing this anyway? Our collective state is such because everyone follows blindly their whims and sooner or later they lead to clashes with others. Clashes between personalities, families, tribes, races, religions, species. Sooner or later we come to a point where two persons desire the same object and then they begin to fight. One says: "No, you step back. My oversoul is much wiser. My desire for the object is divinely ordained. You're just following your twisted passions, so step back!" Of course, the other person says the exact same thing! Everyone is convinced that their whims are divinely ordained and others are who must change their ways. Yes, exactly - we should lay back and watch our movie while others are expected to make efforts and change their ways - it is never we that shall make an effort.
This a blinding, eye-poking, burning contradiction. And the reason people don't notice it is become they have become completely
desensitized through our modern wise gurus who say "Don't worry about the contradictions. They exist only as long as you think about them. Just close your eyes and let go. Follow your heart or however you call it."
And this is how the Matrix is sealed tight. This
guarantees that we can
never re-know that ever-present dynamic. We simply close our eyes for the most glaring crack that runs from end to end of the dreamscape.
Most idealists feel superior to materialists because they have spotted part of the crack in the dreamscape. For the materialist there's no contradiction that even in principle it is impossible to build consciousness from our concepts of matter/energy. It is like the clock is moving irregularly for them yet they are desensitized for it - it's just a part of the dream - and keep seeking explanations/correlations within the dream. The idealist gains a small degree of lucidity by recognizing "This irregularity is not simply a feature of the dream. It is a contradiction which invites me to follow it deeper and there I find out that it all proceeds from a thinking error
of which I have been unconscious, I was fast asleep for the thinking which was bouncing within the poles of the contradiction. It is like a recurring dream pattern that keeps popping up and I take it as part of reality. When I awaken to that part of my being which is in position to think that pattern, I realize the error - a knot is untied within my dreaming being and I become one degree more lucid. But before that was to happen I had to become aware of the contradiction."
Just as Ashvin wrote - unless further steps are taken, analytical idealism leads from one form of Maya into another. True, that latter form is more lucid than the previous but it's clear that it is not the end solution. Otherwise we wouldn't recognize that any challenge to re-know the ever-present dynamic, exists.
So unless we recognize this central crack in the dreamscape, we have no chance to attain to another degree of lucidity. We're bouncing between the poles - one tells us "There's a challenge here, something must be understood, something must be done". The other pole tells us "Let go, close your eyes, keep dreaming. There's a challenge only as long as you
think there's a challenge. Stop thinking and you'll see there's no challenge. There's only the dream flow in its intrinsic is-ness."
This is the contradiction, these are the two areas - the dark and the light and the border in between. If we don't feel this to be a contradiction, if we're perfectly at peace to simply keep dreaming and accept whatever comes, then this is what we'll do. Even if on paper we speak about awakening, lucidity, re-knowing, these words remain only floating dream pictures. They don't have the momentum to nudge the dreaming ego from its comfortable and familiar position.
On the other hand, if we feel this contradiction between activity and receptivity, if we realize this contradiction is not to be simply smeared out, fused and forgotten about, it has the potential to lead us into the fractal boundary where we find a world beyond our wildest imaginations. It is precisely this fractal boundary which is at the focus of PoF - the place where the ideal and the perceptual meet. It's not the goal to superficially smear this polarity and dream happily in apparent lack of contradiction. Instead, by entering deeper into the thinking process we also come in contact with the fractal boundary where the forces driving the dreamscape are found. Our inner world is the fractal boundary, the dreamscape is the fractal boundary, and only when we intimately experience how contradicting poles flow into each other, we have the chance to awaken into higher degrees of lucidity. If we simply smear out the boundary, if we reduce the iteration count and we live in apparent lack of contradictions, we're a completely unfree witness of Cosmic happenings, which lead us hither and tither and our voices are deafened by the winds, as we try to communicate (for no clear reason) with other leaves blown around.
It is easy to see why we avoid confronting this contradiction, why we avoid the perception of our own spiritual activity. Without the proper perspective, the challenge to re-know the ever-present dynamic is an impossible hard challenge, just like saying "the challenge is to understand how consciousness arises out of matter." is an impossible hard problem. We want a dream picture - we want to see a brain and how consciousness evaporates from it. In the same way we want to find the ever-present dynamic as a dream picture presented to us. The true challenge is that this picture manifests not simply as readymade image for our invisible awareness to enjoy. The picture manifest when we struggle at the fractal boundary and recognize there the reflections of our own spiritual activity. These reflections follow the shape of the fractal, just like the activity of our fingers follow the shape of the object that we're touching. In this way, by being conscious of the dynamics of our spiritual activity, we also come to know of the fractal dreamscape.
And this is the key: we only perceive the fractal boundary when we're active, just like we only have tactile perception of the shape of an object by being active with our fingers. If we are not spiritually active, we live in apparent lack of contradiction and laminarity, yet we're a leaf carried by the mysterious and forever unknowable dream streams.
And if now after all the above someone says "I don't see any contradiction here" - then I'm done. It's like pointing at the clock within a dream and saying "look, the arrow moves irregularly", while the other person says "I don't see what you mean." If after all these attempts to show what is meant, the person still doesn't see what is meant, it simply means that on some level the person still prefers the dream world. The person may be curious, they might want to hear a story about the real world but they certainly don't want to approach the crack through which they can know the real world. There are contradictions, white rabbits in the dream that they prefer to close their eyes for. Of course this won't save them from any of the suffering, but at least they'll say "Well, what you're gonna do - this is simply how the movie goes, nothing to be done about it."
Cypher wrote:
You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy, and delicious. After nine years.. you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.
...
If this is reality [speaking of the real world], I prefer The Matrix.