We Are The Problem
We long for a world that is very different where our sensibilities might thrive. I can think of three issues that may help bring clarity to how we as humans add to the problem.
Time and Mind
In our modern world people complain of never having time. The problem is that thinking has replaced instinctive, intuitive being, perception, and sensibility. The difficulty is not with time, or even doing. We are the problem, the way we think.
There is so much going on inside and all around us simultaneously. People are engrossed in realities that only exist inside themselves, engaged in dialoguing, remembering, and projecting, in tech and social media, but mainly with themselves. It isn’t possible to hear or perceive little else. Such thinking occupies space, and there is none left!
It is highly improbable that something new can be introduced, or be squeezed into the already crammed quarters inside. And then there is all that effort needed to keep thoughts going, affecting the attention span that keeps getting smaller and smaller. To make any real contact one has to constantly compete with marketing aimed at faster and more glaring sensory responses. It’s exhausting! To try to reach someone beyond the glare of inner and outside stimuli is a monumental task. To explain and hope for understanding, just makes for more confusion, and tension. It provides more ground for thought!
It may seem absurd, but this is the way people are.
Suppose that one does make contact. This implies understanding, which then has to filter in through the rest of the mental content. If this makes its way inside, it means that something else has to be displaced. Most likely it leads to irritation. People don’t like to be disturbed in their self-absorption. To interrupt their train of thought places you in the limelight and forces you to keep their attention. Distractions come from everywhere. Often the new insight, or source, is not worth the effort. It can’t compete with the subject, project, or memory that would have to take second place. So it probably fades out…in time.
There is the matter of expectations. They are like China-walls and reflect already qualified content. For new learning to take place, senses and emotions have to be strongly stimulated, preferably by attractive imagery and exotic emotional stimuli. If it ever gets to the level of possible implementation, it is likely to be taken on as a chore, a burden, yet another task. It takes too much “time” and effort to break through the habitually comfortable discomfort.
Time is mind. It cannot be handled with more of itself. Only a frequency with greater power than itself might do the job, Consciousness. There is no place for Consciousness in a busy mind, because Consciousness is the room itself obliterated by the amount of constructed “reality”. To tap into this greater power requires a wholly different way of being.
The non-mental impacts of the senses, the extension of sensitivity, and the flexibility of perception, untainted by preordained personal requirements, are the only tools capable of reaching beyond the multiple sensory worlds-within-worlds nourished by the ordinary mind.
Power and Control
The mind not only constructs the props and scenario for ongoing visuals and sensory memory, space and time, it also provides the dynamics to hold or to reject these artificial units.
In the midst of the feature films inside the head, there is always the fixation on control by the “I” who lives in the linear reality of simulated depth. A good amount of pressure, as control, is kept over our world, ourselves, what we want, what we hold dear – family, spouse, career, etc. etc. etc. More obsessed with control than with real power, we sorely confuse the two.
Control is a sad imitation of the force of spirit power of Will. The brand power we know is called willpower. Willpower is forged; it goes hand in hand with personality building and the generation of self-control, invariably based on fear and anger. It has little to do with Will, the power we are capable of tapping into within.
Control relates to physical or mental performance. When we sense that we might be “losing it”, when we feel overwhelmed by another person or circumstance, our experience is one of impotence or powerlessness, followed by the corollaries, anger and fear. Greater effort is made, which means greater organisation, more stress and pressure, culminating in even greater control of the surroundings and ourselves. By triggering kinetic motor power, increased willpower simulates genuine power.
Real power is felt. Where there is control, there can be no power; they function on two entirely different planes. Shifting to an authentic power modality involves letting go of ordinary control over the outside world as imposed by the sequential mind. This implies mastery or dominion. Whereas willpower responds to personal interest and survival, real Power, or Will cannot be made or contained. It arises and flows. It is birthed from within, beyond the tenacity of the thinking mind.
Power corresponds to depth, neither intellectual nor emotional. As pure Will, it derives from Consciousness and the awareness of being at cause. It places one, beyond the noisy personality, at the center of the universe as a sun. A miniscule fragment of magnificence, it involves you and only you. Its power may be summoned and employed by the conscious personality but it is never available through force or tension. It spells a way of being that is natural, relaxed, and fully aware. A powerful person is sensed and doesn’t need to exert control. A powerful person is free.
For all the talk of freedom, most people prefer some form or another of dependence. Impotence and powerlessness create dependence, which temporarily cover up the fear of being alone. Unfortunately, people would rather control themselves and one another, than be free and powerful.
Being Together
How many times do we complain, with people close to us, that the other doesn’t spend “enough time” with us? To which they might respond, “but I’m here! What more do you want?” Actually, we crave for a lot more. The fact that physical bodies occupy the same space does not mean that they are experientially together. Side by side, people involve themselves with mental pursuits, recreation, and occupations. Sensitive persons are aware that we miss the tenuous delight of “being” with another.
In such make-believe sharing, when and if conversation takes place in intimacy, often it is but a reflection of what we say to ourselves. Dialogue fits into a pre-ordained formula of question and answer, opposition, competition, or sharing of similes. On the other hand, “being” with one another implies sensing and feeling, linking to one another on multiple levels. This can never be boring or repetitive, because it occurs outside the framework of thought.
Everything begins with ourselves. Being “together” first involves contact with one’s core Self. In our school of Inner Alchemy, this is sought through the practice of Alignment applied under all conditions. When such a connection with life is made, inner senses allow us to make real contact with forces, rather than with labels or meanings. We know quality and affinity, we sense harmony or dissonance, we feel waves of living energy flowing through us, and we learn to dance and flow spontaneously. As we gain amplitude and perception, we become our own best company and own best adviser. There is no “need” to be with another to feel complete or gain perspective. Once made, this contact goes on beyond the aware engagement with another. It becomes a way of life. The symphony switched on continues. There is a feeling of rightness. When it is not made, there is a sense of loneliness and lack, which obligates people to do more and more to and for one another, filling up time and space.
We don’t know how to be with one another because we don’t know how to be with ourselves, without an occupation or an identity. Without the ongoing inner commentary, we don’t know what we are or what programming to follow. “Being together” is a consequence of fullness rather than need, of being rather than doing. To “be” requires standing outside of time and control and doing, in silence. It means sharing life as with a flower, or the breeze…with deepest appreciation. Life knows this state of Being, it feels it in all its forms, and it responds in kind.
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