Fear and 2 approaches

(1) The usual approach to fear is run. Say we see something in the shadows. Fear1 is run.

(2) Fear2 is completely different.

Fear1 is based upon saving a "me." There is the object of danger and there is the object "I" and I must put as big a distance between the two object. "I" must get away. With discrete objects of fear like tigers this is straightforward. But there are other more subtle objects of fear that originate in the mind and how do we get away from the mind? Phobias for example are not like tigers. we can watch other people navigate phobias without coming to any harm at all and having no fear. But for phobia suffered there is considerable fear and we wish to get away. Take spiders. In some parts of the world they are completely harmless, and many people have no fear. But an arachnophobe must get away regardless the actual danger.

Now in Fear2 we notice something about Fear 1. If we think about Fear1 again in fact there are 3 entities. There is:
    1) the object of fear,

    2) the self and

    3) the new object of the fear itself!

Fear1 just makes things worse. Fear2 is a radical switch. We simplify and focus on what is important. We ignore the "me" and just look at the other 2 object. That is the object of which we are fearful (if we can identify it) and the fear itself.

The job for Fear2 is so much simpler. We no longer have to worry about saving a "self" and running away. All we need to do is look at the fear and the object of fear, or shall we say the Thing of Fear (TOF).

Well we looked at TOF already at the start to make sure we didn't need to run. If a tiger comes into the room we run obviously. This is Fear1 and we don't care about the fear we care about the tiger and getting safe.

Now I believe in OCD this first stage gets complex cos people go back and check the TOF again and again and again and again unsure whether it is a real fear or not. They struggle to get to Fear2. The test would be to look at other people. If other people negotiate the situation with simplicity then its Fear2. If we can't tell whether the spider is really something dangerous then ask someone. Some intelligent examination of the TOF is needed to find out if it really is dangerous. When we are facing fear this is really difficult as we can't think straight and see the TOF clearly. Some "recklessness" may be useful. "Feel the fear and do it anyway" kind of logic. Other people are useful here. But even without them study of the TOF and getting to know it is essential. OCD is all about doubt, and if we are doubting that something is really a danger the chances are it is just OCD doubt. I mean even people with OCD don't hesitate to run from a tiger! So if we are deliberating over a Fear 1 and can't make it to Fear 2 chances are its not a real fear we need to run from and we can confidently sit back and switch to Fear 2 where we ignore our safety and start to examine the TOF and the fear itself. 

Now once we are convinced that the TOF is not really dangerous--either logically, through watching other people or through some recklessness--then its time to ignore saving the self. Jesus really was amazing here. He died on the cross not to save himself but to save others, in the face of what was actually Face 1 and complete mortal danger. In ordinary life (where we are not liberating the entire world from its sin) this can lead to overly reckless behaviour, but borrowing from Buddha staying away from extremes is essential. Don't self mortify for others, don't ignore others in the pursuit of our own salvation. Letting go of saving the self is so much bigger than just facing fear, but fear is a sign we haven't done thus yet. And overcoming fear may well help open the doors to liberation from saving the self.

Of course one risk here is that when we rise above a fear the self comes back and owns that win. We miss the opportunity for the real win of getting away from the self. If we overcome a fear the enlightened response would be to wish others can do this and help them thus reinforcing the freedom from self.

But anyway back to Fear2. Once there is just the TOF and the fear we are no longer moving and there is no one who needs saving and no one there to run away. Now the fear becomes just an event, just a think that turned up like a black cloud.

We know immediately Kondañña insight that what has turned up must one day leave. If we think about this fundamental Buddhist teaching it is obvious. Anything that turns up must mobile, and so it is just a matter of time before its mobility causes it to leave. That loud noise that is annoying us has not been there forever: it has turned up. And so we know in its very nature it must go quiet eventually. Indeed a sound that had always been sounding we would no even hear! The very nature of existence depends upon the equal twin properties of turning up and leaving.

So we can see that the fear that has turned up is just obeying the most fundamental law of the universe already.

Now I won't say any more because even getting to Fear2 is the win. Once there is no self to run, and we can begin to "sit with the feeling" then it becomes just a feeling. The more we turn into the experience the more we discover. And the more we discover the more we will be able to face the fear and master it. Eventually in all cases we will see the cause of the fear as a mistake and then we are free.

So in summary the key thing in Fear is actually a very profound spiritual movement that we need to make anyway and so Fear is actually our most precious teacher! Lucky us!

 

When will I enlighten?

This is a similar question to "Where is the Mind?" or "Who enlightens?"

The normal view of life is that we have experiences in the present and we have memories of the past and we have thoughts and expectations about the future and time travels with us from the Past to the Future.

We therefore expect enlightenment to be waiting for us in the future.

We also have ideas about who we are, and where we are. We expect "me" to enlighten, somewhere like under a tree, and at some time in the future. Perhaps we go on pilgrimage to find a place where we can enlighten.

But lets look at someone else doing all this. Call them something random like Freda. So Freda exists in a stream of existence going from the Past to the Future. Things happen to Freda in this stream. She marks them down in a diary. She has blank pages yet unwritten that to her in this stream will be written some time in the future. And she can look back at all the written pages that somehow have mysteriously been created by a person that is gone, but she understands as the same "self" as is reading them now, but somehow in the Past. Now this is Freda's life we are talking about. To her it is all she has, this is what she is, and its like a necklace with beads being threaded onto it to make up the sequence of her life. This bead is when I was born, then some beads later I went to school etc and eventually there will be the bead of Death and the necklace will be complete. Hopefully one day too the enlightenment bead will be added and perhaps that will mean no death bead, people are never too sure about this bit.

But enlightenment does not float down these streams. It does not exist within the channels of our life. It is not a bead. Enlightenment is realising that there is more to life than just this stream. We don't get nihilistic and tell Freda that her life stream is not important cos its just one of millions. Instead we point out to Freda that she is greater than this life stream, she is for starters able to watch all the beading! She can just let the life stream carry on as it does, as rich and important as ever, but that she doesn't need to wait until the Death bead gets added to escape it.

The point of Enlightenment is non-attachment and emptiness. We get used to letting go of the life stream. We get used to just watching things being added to the necklace and we get used to this being the way. This is my life, its great, its amazing, its wonderful, its extraordinary and mysterious but it just is, it doesn't need me to be present for it to carry on. I am free to just let it happen. I'm not actually "in" this stream.

Now that ability to let the stream just be; that is the liberation. There is nothing down the track called enlightenment, and when we practice Buddhism or any religious practice we are not heading "towards" some end or goal or achievement! We are instead learning to accept God into our lives as some might say, or learning to accept things as they are.

That said there are stages to this and for some, and at some times, it would be good to fit our religious practice "into our" life stream and feeds a few beads onto the necklace, at least to start with, or when we are confused and need some direction. 

Suffering and the "Me"

The typical way we approach bad things is by first owning them or rejecting them, and then either suffering to get rid of them, or turning on empathy to join someone else in their suffering and helping them get rid of them.

But its all very slightly mistaken. The correct approach is not to own/disown bad things. They are neither mine nor yours. And instead when we see someone struggling with bad things whether they are ourselves or someone else we engage with compassion.

Now personally I am a male of a certain age and emotions are not for men. They are sissy and the realm of women. Into this basket of stiff upper lip went compassion and care. The male realm is one for reason, debate and logic. Well emotions are still mostly pointless. But compassion is not an emption. Its the feeling side of wisdom. An enlightened being releases the compassion they have within, which is nothing but the innate response to bad things. Bad things by absolute logical definition are unwanted. It is knowing that a being is trying to get rid of bad things which elicits compassion. Now this can put us under stress. That test for replicants in Blade Runner of watching a tortoise on its back struggling to right itself. Our innate response, before even thinking, is to simply to help it right itself. Its innate and come from our very being, far beneath the layers of thinking, self and even emptions. We may have thoughts arise that stop this. Like its only an animal why should I care. Or if we have some anger to vent we think stupid thing, it got itself in this mess, let it get it out. Or if we are really angry we may even want it dead. Or perhaps we have lighter emotions and feel sorry for it, have sympathy for it, or perhaps even start crying. All these are actually useless. The only thing of real importance is the primal move to help it. That is buried deep in there for some people and needs to be encouraged out, but it is there. Perhaps sympathy and pity for the creature have a place but its not as important as the Buddha Nature of compassion. Now if we are unable to help the creature for some reason, and it is just helpless lying there we will probably start to feel extraordinary stress. I think that's what the Blade Runners were looking for. we want to help, but we cant and this causes stress. The all sorts of emotions start up like anger, sadness, depression, hopelessness, despair, crying, high blood pressure. And over time we will start to hurt ourselves. So not only is the tortoise is trouble but we get into to trouble.

Very first conversation with a Buddhist monastic was about this. She recalled meeting a Christian missionary on the way to India. When they arrived they were horrified at the levels of poverty and vowed to help. The Christian unfortunately did not think of herself and eventually work herself into a nervous breakdown. Now there was 1 other person in need of help. Compassion must include the self. But because of this weakness of splitting suffering into me and you we often either ignore our self, or we ignore you.

So if we cannot help the tortoise the wise mind does not break down. It understands the suffering, it is full of compassion, but that does not demand for what is impossible. Wise helping is always a practical matter. Emotions often get in the way of this. And especially when they are "our" emotions. How many people don't give up on the tortoise not so much for the tortoise as for having to personally carry their failure to help afterwards. This me/you thing really messes things up.

So the proper approach to bad things is not to own them. That sense that things are happening to "us", is really just the fact that they are present and really occurring. Now it is true that a body is needed for there to be sights, and it is correct that things are happening to a body. But we can watch all this without ever thinking there is a "me." Its all just happening as its happening. No one to own any of it.

Now there is one potential problem. A thinking mind may say if bad things don't belong to me then what is wrong with doing bad things? That is still "me" though. Why would you steal a car? It is only so that you can have the car. And that stems from thinking there is a "you" to have the car. Now its true there is no "you" to have the car either so there is no such thing as stealing in reality. Firstly most people won't see it like that. And secondly if there is no me/you then why would you ever need to "take" (as in possess something for yourself) anyway. In fact all "bad" things we do come from this me/you distinction. Once it is gone we no longer cause harm, or at least only through complete accident, because we behave to others as we behave to our self. How interesting that Jesus most famously should say this! And even in western philosophy Kant's Categorical Imperative argues that if there was a universal law of behaviour it would need to apply to everyone equally else it would not be universal. His view does get into problems as people start to think of times when stealing is the right thing to do. In the Buddhist and Jesus version they are based upon the individual while at the same time removing the barriers of me/you. Just do what is right and ignore whether it is for me or you is so simple really. And original compassion as it issues spontaneously from us below the level of thinking and self is like this. We help without regard for who we are helping.

You can't "do" meditation

 I still find myself after more than 20 years sometimes thinking I want to achieve something from meditation. I over heard a girl on holiday last year say I've done my mornings meditation and I should be feeling at lot better than I am, Obviously really important for her to meditate on why she wants to feel better and what is wrong with the way she already feels. It may be an unpleasant feeling, but it is the feeling that is present you can't escape that. It is the real feeling and better for than than some some fake imagined feeling and worse a desired feeling.

Yet I still partition my mind into external/internal and good/bad rather than just present. And worse some things get claimed as "mine" and some as "not mine." I hear a bird sing and that is "not mine" and I have some good feeling and think "that is mine" or "this is me." And then you get a bad feeling and think "don't want it to be mine." What a pointless mess. They are all just what is happening right now, they are all just the appearance of reality as it is. And in meditation reality is all that matters.

And it messes up meditation cos we have the good feeling and we think great meditation is going well. And we have the bad feeling and think I'm doing something wrong. Well in a way this is true. The pure mind, unobstructed and empty of defilements is blissful and joyful. The presence of bad things is purely the arisings from karma in our mind. So in a very superficial way the good things are ours and the bad things are not. But this is wrong on two levels.

Firstly there is no self for things to attach to. When we become aware of the present do we also become aware of a "self" onto which everything sticks? No we just have the awareness plain and simple, it comes from and belongs to no one it is just the present. So pure mind is not pure mind "of" someone. It is just pure mind. If we wish to entertain thoughts of "someone" owning it that all happens within the pure mind. Pure mind itself is pure and free and these thoughts do not concern it, they just occur within it. If you are aware of a thought then it is IN mind, it isn't ABOUT mind! Indeed all thoughts just occur within Pure Mind, the Mind itself can never be the subject of such thoughts. In Kantian terms, Mind is the Transcendental condition for the possibility all things even thoughts and concepts.

The second way it is wrong is that Pure Mind does not make a distinction between good things and bad things. It is only interested in "what is." Regardless whether the feeling is good or bad, it "IS" and that reality is the point. Don't even bother to unpack it. This is Pema Chondron's way of seeing things as a way to greater realisation (not using her words right here). Good or Bad we just see it for what it is. In doing that we have a way of relating to things. 

This last thing is so alien to the normal mind. The normal mind avoids the bad and heads straight towards the good. And when we start to meditate undoubtedly we are heading towards it as just another "good" along with fun times and chocolate. Ajahn Brahm would certainly welcome the good aspect of it. He says it it is not good then you are doing it wrong. But really we want to go beyond this coming and going movement that it sets up.

I think there are disagreements amongst meditation practitioners on this. Jhana is certainly a beyond this world pleasure and to path towards jhana is the rising of pleasure. Buddha absorbed into this extremely pleasant state as a child and it was the memory of this which redirected him toward the final successful stage of his enlightenment path. (That along with realising the importance of middle path and compassion when he was given the bowl of rice which led him away from self-mortification). But in Chan/Zen the focus is much more on the Pure Mind that has no relationship with it contents. Good and bad feelings come and go like clouds blowing across the sky: the sky is not affected in any way.

There is no one answer. But here I just wanted to highlight the stubborn habit of dividing the objects of ones mind into those we want to keep and those we want to get rid of. And how we are tempted to use meditation to getting rid of them and promote the good feelings, when really all things are of interest in meditation simply cos they are present.

Now it may be of interest sometimes to unpack bad and good thoughts and feelings. But this is no longer meditation and is more thinking. When you hold onto the tail of a mental snake and get dragged along with it you are thinking. This blog entry itself is one such snake that awoke in my mind and actually dragged me away from meditation a few minutes ago! How ironic is that!! But we can get good insight from following these snakes, or far better go the other way and see where they came from and why they arose at all. Seeing how a thought arises goes back into meditation. You are no longer getting dragged along by it, but going back to just seeing it as an event emerging in your mind. With free and easy mind like this you pick things up, and you put them down again easy. It doesn't matter if they are good or bad.

I suspect one of the problems with good and bad mental objects is that they illicit emotions. Particularly with bad objects we can get afraid and that is a particular big snake that picks us up in its jaws and drags us away. The power of meditation is to practice not getting picked up and just let it go like a thunder cloud. It won't last forever. Be amazed at how this comes into existence and fills your mind with darkness and lightening and rain. And then be amazed how it goes. Obviously the speed it goes depends upon how caught in the mouth we are. This is the problem with the mind that seeks the good things and tries to get rid of the bad things. When the bad things come it gets into a massive battle to get rid of them, and this makes it all last a lot longer than it needs to.

I realise writing this how we get fixed on things from the past. Great zen story of master and disciple coming to a swollen river. A woman is wanting to cross and the master pickers her up and carries her across. Some days later the celibate disciple eventually loses it and shouts at the celibate master that he committed a grave offence by touching the woman. The master simply says I only touched her for as long as it took to cross the river, you have been touching her ever since. So it is with good and bad objects of our minds. Long after the cloud or sunshine has passed we are trying to rid ourselves of the bad experience or seeking more of the good experience. We do not simply take things as they are.

So what of karma and morality. Could this mean we become a psycho and have no emotional response to things. Bad things happen and we just ignore, and good things happen and we just ignore. We become a stone. Actually yes and no. Becoming a stone is the 1st skill. It is better to have no response than have the wrong response. Someone makes us angry. It is so much better to ignore the situation if we are going to be unskilful than to wade in unskilfully and make things worse by perhaps shouting or starting a fight. But as we get more skilful and we start to see better ways of approaching things both internally and externally then we can open up to experiences eventually fully.

One scientific observation of meditation is that it strengthens the frontal cortex and that translates into better self control. Or actually its vice versa. When you have better self control it turns up in brain scans as a more active frontal cortex! Meditation brings you into the present, and that means we only have to deal with what is real. 100% of our problems lie not in what is real, but what our mind does with it which is unreal. With meditation we put ever greater emphasis on the real.

When I first meditated I noticed just with 5 min a day for a month I had a peaceful gap between myself and events. It meant that things I was afraid of were just a little further away, and I had a minute to think about things before I had a strong emotion like anger. I used to think I was not an angry person. With that gap I realised I was an angry person. Meditation gives you perspective and enables you not to get dragged in but to see reality as it is.

Anyway having dragged myself away with a long essay on unreality its time to go back to meditating.

Hawk moth wing expansion problem

I have raised and hatched dozens of moths and butterflies including Attacus atlas at one point but the two times I tried to raise hawk moths (Elephant and Lime Tree) the adults failed to inflate their wings.

I have a pupa overwintering box and this winter a Noctuid and Geometrid both emerged and inflated their wings fine. But the Lime Tree Hawkmoth appears to have just walked around the box and even sadly got stressed and ejected some anti-predator fluid.

When I opened the box it was too late for the wings to inflate. As a female I released her back on a lime tree tree near where I found her in the hope that she may still be able to release her pheromones to attract a mate and lay eggs before dying. In her case she would not have been able to fly and spread her genes, but hopefully would have the chance to complete the cycle all the same. Rather sad.

May years ago I had the same problem with an Elephant Hawkmoth. At the time I put that down to the moth somehow being trapped in twigs in the pupa box. I now put nothing in there in case.

I'm guessing now that Hawkmoths, perhaps because of their large wingspan, have some in built switch to stop them expanding their wings until they are well clear of obstructions. In future I will put then in a large net to enable them to climb far above the ground to see if that helps trigger wing expansion.

With smaller moths you can see the chrysalis start to lighten as the wing form. This appears not to be the case with Hawkmoths as the pupa wall is so strong. Also the pupae don't seem to move either. At least not with my Lime Tree Hawkmoth. So there is no way to tell whether the pupa is still still alive. It must be moved from over wintering to emerging box at the right time of year and left. Earlier if kept over wintering at higher room temperatures, and also moisture is a problem if keep indoors which is much drier than in soil or under leaves. I keep in the garage to try and encourage emergence at the right time of year so they are more likely to meet other moths and mate.

  

Happening & Relativity and Self (2466 words)

 "Seeing things as they are." This is actually easily misunderstood. As is "being in the present"

The former suggests we are interested in what thing are. This is not true. The latter suggests the emphasis is on "being." And the dangerous next step is to start wondering "who" is being. This is all irrelevant.

We are not interested in what or who. This is not a question or an answer. People say you will find the answer within. This is a different kind of thing. That is driven by desire.

A better way to say it is "watching what is happening." "Happening" is actually a very interested word. Its value rests not on what is happening, but that it is happening.

Just before I wrote this a flake of bird's down drifted past on the gentle breeze. It came very close to me and I was able, for an instant, to watch it pass and be able to see some of the filaments that made it up, and also stand with it as it effortlessly levitated before me in its journey from who knows to an unknown destination.

Now what was particularly poignant was that it was happening at that moment. This was the most noticeable thing. I've seen bird down a hundred times, its boring if you just casually think about it. Perhaps you can stimulate interest to re-examine it by wondering how it came into existence, both this particular piece and "down" as a thing. Therapod dinosaurs are supposed to have been covered in it. T-Rex would have had a thick coat of down. I could for a moment be in the Cretaceous and this be drifting down wind from a T-Rex.

But this is how easily the inventive, imagining, knowing mind strips the "happening" from things. None of this "why" or "what" is what really matters.

What matters is the moment being filled with "happening".

Now recent musings on "self" are very relevant here because this simple happening quickly becomes polluted with ego and we think "wow this is happening to me." "I am seeing this". This is a "moment in my life". We can remind ourselves to be in the present, and we move the present to warp around us. We try to sit there in the present, try to relish this happening as much as possible, try to remember it, try to check this is really the present, note that I am experiencing the present.

This is not entirely false. When we are experiencing a notable happening we can note that it is real and present, actually happening, rather than imaginary or remembered. But we quickly ignore this because it's not the point. (Although obviously remembering something is itself a happening, but who has the breadth of vision to see what we remember as a memory rather than what is being remembered! It is like realising in the middle of a Mario Cart game that its really just a game on a computer screen) 

Often when we "try" to enter the present that becomes the point, more than just accepting what is happening. Things are always happening, the present is always present. We can't make anything "present." To be present is just to see actual happenings.

Now this perhaps is why particular events are so crucial for elucidating the mind that is present. A particular happening like the bird down carries with it particular purity and intensity. Its a very discrete and noticeable happening. It is gentle and easily watchable. Its unusual: things floating at the whim of the wind seem to have a life of their own (very American Beauty). And this all brings forth a purity of experience like mist has cleared from the windows.

Now we can't always be so acutely aware of happenings. Often there is mist across our mind, often we are distracted, often we are too busy, worried or embedded in life (the Mario Game is too engrossing) or have the energy or time to enter the world of some something gently drifting in the wind.

But actually this is not bad. We must do what we need to do, and if that means just getting on with it that is great. In fact focusing clearly on what we need to do, does actually take us in the right direction, even while we can't see how (because we are focusing on what we need to do).

In that busyness we will find time spontaneously open up to the world of some happening. If we try too hard we will actually close it off. Its there, just let it happen!

==

One thread not pushed in this is how the ego takes control of the Present. There is a particular drive in science and mathematics to know the world and find some fundamental underlying theory. The real goal of this is to replace reality with the Self. The Western World is manifesting on a massive scale the same process that happens in our own minds. I don't want to see what is there, I want to see what I already know and am familiar with. Why don't we want to see what is there? On one hand its slightly frightening cos we don't know what we will see. But on the deepest existential level the problem with seeing what is there is handing over control to the world. When we are open to the world its an act of bravery. We put down our expectations, and our knowledge, and our achievements, and our security and we allow the world to be as it IS. We don't know for sure what is there, we don't know the personality of the world, we are not great friends with the world, and worst of all to be open to the world is to admit that we don't know and don't control the world. To be open to happening we need to step beyond our ego! That is quite unexpected. Happening is the opposite of Ego.

I noted above how this manifests. When we see something the ego immediately tries to under pin it and replace it with "I know." We immediately switch from seeing on the "outside" and start seeing on the "inside", looking at what we think it is rather than taking it in as it is. This is how prejudice works. The ego steps in, invalidates what is there, and replaces it with what "I think." That moment when a soldiers realises that the person they just killed was a human being like them self. Under brainwashing they have such a strong internal image that their ego easily replaces what is there with what is here. All evil in fact stems from seeing what we want to see, rather than what is there. Placing our self above what is there.

There are videos on the web now explaining the dangers in Christian sacrifice. You hear it a lot how people destroy themselves by "putting other people first." Obviously if you put yourself last all the time you will starve and die. This is just anti-ego: it is still ego. The people with worst ego either hurt everyone by putting them self first, or hurt themselves by putting other people first. Either way there is harm. The point of being "open" is just to see what is there. We don't harm our self we just allow ourselves to be vulnerable. There is no forcing people into first place or last place, its just not forcing anything. You can't break into the fortress of the Present. The more you try the further way it gets. You smash down the draw bridge and find the courtyard empty and windswept. The present has gone. You can live in this lifeless present, thinking you are enlightened, reading books and talking-the-talk (like me here) but its a grey skies, cold and dull reality. This is not the real present. Like they always say in Buddhism there is no attainment. There is no war to win, there is nothing to do. The present is already here, things happen all  by themselves we need only drop our own draw bridge and let the world in. This is what Buddha calls anatta - no-self.

So its a common experience as life goes on to become jaded and a great dullness and loss of inspiration fills our existence. We can get tired of life. This is the core of the musical Gigi where the fast living Gaston Lachaille is now bored, but its a lesson to everyone who pursues a selfish life. Perhaps it manifests as a mid-life crisis where we suddenly become aware of the sands of time slipping through our hands and we have nothing to show for it. We have "gained" nothing, there is nothing to hold on to and the ground is slipping from beneath our feet. Excellent! Welcome to reality! As argued a lot recently "whose feet is the ground slipping from?" If there is no one there then how can anything slip? That "someone" who feels the ground of time slipping is none other than the ego. The pin we stick in the world and try to label our self. But as argued in the previous post once that pin goes in then the world now becomes measured and we spend our days seeing things going this way and that, we see ourselves gain and lose, we see ourselves get older each year. The true world as free and relative gets replaced with a fixed pin and everything becomes measured relative to this. We gain the solidity and security of having a fixed pin, but we look out and the world is now full of change and insecurity. So we start to ignore the "happening" and try to replace it with the thoughts, knowledge and achievement of our familiar "pin" or "ego" or "self". And that leads to the dullness and tiresomeness of life. Living in an echo chamber of our own thoughts and understanding the air becomes stale and the light fades. Life is only really lived with the windows open and the outside world and fresh air free to come in. But to do this we have to take a risk that things will be new and what we think we are and what we think of the world will be full challenged. And this all requires us to let go from gripping the pin and start to move into the world. Except once we let go of the pin there is no "outside" world anymore, free to move through a relative world with "absolutes" freely occurring between arbitrary relationships.

A note here on the relative and the dialectical. The "pin" analogy comes from a description of Einstein's Relativity Theory I once read. It was pointed out that speed is relative. You cannot "stick a pin" in space and use that as a your definition of stationary. You can always find something moving slower than you and faster than you. Sitting on a train (the experience of this new technology was fundamentally formative to Einstein's thoughts on motion) you can only know how fast you are going relative to other things. If the train next to you is going faster that looks the same as it being stationary and you going backwards. But usually we look at the tracks and use that as our relative point. But as science has shown really the Earth is rotating so the tracks are themselves in motion if we compare with the Sun. All motion is relative. But actually all things are relative. Interesting that Protagoras made this same statement "Man is the measure of all things" in the C5th BC so its a very old realisation. We can extend Protagoras from "man" to "ego." The fixed absolute world of the bigot and unhappy person comes from putting the world immovably in relation to the "self." Key thing there is "immovable." Anyone can put things in relation to themselves that is not the problem. The problem is being unable to change this point of view. Wars happen when people only see things from one side. Its ridiculous when you think about it that in a war between sides A and B people on both sides will end their lives just because A cannot adopt the perspective of B and B cannot adopt the perspective of A. Its easy to see that anyone can adopt either side since people on side A and B have actually done this! That is proven. What people on sides A and B struggle with is changing sides. But when either A or B win then they will be forced to adopt the other side anyway so what was the fight about? All forms of violence are pointless*.

* Relativity is really disarming and troublesome to a strong ego. Most famously in recent Western History you had side A = "Axis" and side B = "Allies." B won the war and now everyone is forced to see thing like side B even those who once fought for side A. Now this is very complex and its a bad idea to start this here but the world of B thinks that A was "evil" and the murder of millions of people is proof of that. But it fails to explain why people were fighting for A then. Surely no one lays their life down for "evil." Side A must have thought something else. But that "something else" has been destroyed by Side B. I have given it a lot of though and I know it. But this is just to illustrate how entrenched ego can become and how immovable our self can be. We can think that holding on to this "pin" is essential and letting go will literally lead us into Hell. The "ego" plays all kinds of tricks to stay relevant and the centre of the world. All we know about WW2 was that the strongest side won, but which ever side had one they would have demolished the other side and we would hold on to the winning view point. In the case of side A it was to avoid one world Imperial government and share global power. That battle for hearts and minds still goes on. But its a really bad idea to discuss this here cos there is literally nothing more emotive and ego driven that this subject. But I put it in to illustrate just how powerful the ego is, and how closed minded we can become.

So all this comes from the simple attempt to explore "happening" and the part it plays in our lives, and especially how being open to the world is freedom from the dullness of poverty of fixed ego.