PsyOps in China?

Its no secret that the West has been trying to subdue China for almost 200 years. And, if Opium Wars are anything to go by, will stop at nothing to do this.

Currently the method used to crash China is the argument that the people are "not free". This in fact is not true. People in China are less likely to spend time in gaol than even British, and far less than Americans whose government imprisoned more of its own people than any other government on Earth. The Chinese state does less to restrict freedom than most countries in fact.

We also know that the West is not really concerned about freedom given that it supports the worst dictatorship in the world in Saudi Arabia where it is illegal to even criticise the government, and such criticism will end you up in prison if not publicly beheaded. While the media was looking at who murdered Jamal Khashoggi they rather neglected to point out the elephant in the room that it is illegal in Saudi Arabia to even criticise the government and the death penalty is available for those who break this law. The West does not apparently care for freedom at all and happy turns a blind eye to the worst excesses of totalitarian dictatorships like Saudi Arabia.

We also know that the CIA and MI6 are experts in causing unrest in countries. This was famously demonstrated in the MI6 overthrow of the democratic system in Iran to reinstall the corrupt dictatorship of the Shah who in turn agreed to carry on allowing the West to exploit Iran and extract oil and wealth from the country.

The history of the West is very much the subduing of countries and the extraction of their wealth. And when people rise up the West will violently oppose this where possible or seek terms of independence through which they can maintain the best terms for exploitation. Most famously when Germany rose up against the West in the 1930s Churchill was prepared to begin a global war to suppress their freedom.

The key technique used in 1953 in Iran was the buying of hooligans to create violent unrest which western backed media then sold in the press as a popular uprising against the democratic government. Simply by staging protests and violence the West was able to fake the idea that there was a popular movement against the government. The West then violently stormed the central media building took over the media of the country and the rest was easy. When a militia, backed simply by the West, surrounded the compound of  the democratic leader Mossadegh and started to attack it with tanks they sold it again as a popular uprising. And when the Shah walked back in, it was made out in the media to be a triumphant return of the true leader of Iran. When in actual fact a democratic vote had shown that Iranians were actually sick of being exploited by the West and their corrupt puppet leader Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. But Iranians were fooled into thinking the popular mood had moved against Mossadegh even though the whole thing was performance was staged by just a few hundred people paid by the West.

This is how dangerous the media is. Control of the media, and the ability to create unrest are all that is needed to fake the idea of popular movements.

And when we look at China this more than anything looks like CIA backed unrest.

It is more complex than just finding a few people who will agree to fake it for cash. The CIA sets up groups and organisation so that people think they are working for one thing when in fact they are working to bring down the establishment that the CIA wants to overthrow to replace with a US aligned regime. US choses anyone who is useful and it is rarely democracy, despite officially using Democracy as the excuse for most CIA activity. Saudi Arabia is the best example of this.

In the TV series Narcos, as blogged before, the DEA is moved into Colombia by the CIA to remove Pablo Escobar. To the DEA it looks like a noble thing to do. But actually the DEA is pointed at Escobar not because of the drugs. There are dozens of other drugs barons and when Escobar is removed they just take over and the drugs trade to US actually increases. The DEA were not there to do anything about drugs, they were there to remove Escobar because he was a popular leader who threatened to end US control of the region and upset the corrupt US backed leaders in Colombia. CIA goes to huge lengths in South America to stop socialist and communist uprisings in order to stop the people controlling their own countries and resources. So DEA is just used by the CIA for purposes other than what they think they are doing. And so it is across the world. I know someone who was invited into Ukraine to set up government infrastructure. Like DEA a noble thing. But really I suspect its at the request of the CIA who is using them to remove Russian influence in the region so the US can take over and corrupt the leadership.

And we do not know the details but those we are told are rioting in China are going to be a complex mix of people, but I suspect very few of them will not have seen US dollars in one way or another for what they do.

Now governments are in a difficult position. If they quite rightly suppress the illegal unrest (that is the job of governments to keep the peace) the West can use media footage of this as evidence that the government is oppressing its people. Obviously that is nonsense the government is just suppressing the illegal foreign backed unrest. But if the government does nothing to suppress the unrest then it will look weak and the people will ask why they are not suppressing this illegal activity. People like effective governments that stand up for rule of law and protect their interests. Having riots is not a good look. US regularly has riots over the huge number of people who die in detention (around 450 a year) but its interesting how the media down plays this. Iran has a max of 11 a year and news is following the riots there. CIA may even be fuelling the riots.

Now the West is claiming the issue in China is over democracy. But actually no one in the West or the East had any say in their government's COVID policy. There was no difference is the democracy in America, Britain or China and people took to the streets in all countries to complain about lockdowns.

What was different was the degree of lockdown. In America which has the least over a million people have died. That is a lot of people losing their life to a government policy. In fact it amounts to a Holocaust. China by contrast has shown considerably more respect for life and despite being 4 times the size of US only 5,233 people have died! This is actually a spectacular achievement and demonstrates extraordinary care for the people.

Now what has probably happened is people have seen pictures of the West out of lockdown but as is typical the sacrifice made has been hidden in the media. If China followed the US policy then 4.5 million people would be in coffins. Do the demonstrations in China realise they are demanding the early deaths of 4.5 million people! That is almost like asking for the gas chambers to be rebuilt in terms of the magnitude of death. Its a tricky thing indeed. But Western propaganda as usual is just spinning it into nonsense in order to play psyops.

Bottom line when you see riots and protests on TV don't necessarily believe what you see! CIA PSyops are extremely sophisticated and far reaching.

Russia Today in Britain

https://www.rt.com/

And Facebook will show a thumbnail but will warn you:

Now we might wonder why the Russian Government is not allowed a voice in the West. Why does the West care what Russia says?

Well first off there is one problem. Who is the "West." Someone somewhere has decided that Russia does not want to tell the same story that they want. That was not me, that was not you. So despite claiming freedom the "West" is controlled by some very powerful people who want to control what you are exposed to. That is already incredibly revealing about the West.

The irony of course is that the West says that it is Russia that is controlled by incredibly powerful people who control what the Russians are exposed to. Yet already we have proven that the West is actually like this. Wow. Big reveal. And since we are exposed to what a narrative designed by a small minority in the West we now know not to trust our own media.

Another problem is you do not see this on Facebook :

BBC is funded by the British State government and should carry a warning. Yet it does not. So Facebook has no problem with State Media itself. It has a problem with Russian State Media.

Now BBC is an interesting entity. Very famously it took on the UK Government over US claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons he could deploy in 45 minutes. I've said before the US never tells the truth and anyone with their head screwed on should have had alarm bells ringing when it turned out it was US intelligence. Hans Blix of the UN weapons Inspectors had clearly said there were no WMDs and weapons experts in UK were prepared to agree with this. Yet the British Government for whatever reason chose to listen to the US.

The result was the UK government moving to shut down the BBC. They were told withdraw the story or you will be closed.

Now this was very revealing. It means that until 2003 the BBC has some independence from the UK government. But the UK government did not like this and moved to make the BBC obedient to the government and not inclined to criticise the government. The BBC then has become exactly what Facebook has warned us about RT. It has become a mouthpiece for the government. One might say the West is worried out RT cos it knows exactly how its own press works.

Now why should we listen to the State controlled BBC any more than RT when BBC is just a biased mouthpiece of government just like RT.

The issue then is that the West does not want us to listen to the Russian Government and only the British Government.

Now its arguable whether the American press is independent of the Government. But it is objectively obvious that the press never really criticises the US Government. And when whistle blowers like Edward Snowdon go around the controlled media system we see just how much the US wants to control the narrative.

What all this points to is that there are very powerful people in the West who will stop at nothing to control what people in the West think. And countries like Russia which the West wants to destroy are fundamentally not allowed to have a voice in case people the West start to realise that they are being lied to by the Totalitarian Government of the West that actually closes down freedom of speech and is committed to brainwashing.

The really worrying thing is that the West is clearly concerned about whatever Russia wants to say. And this really suggests that Russia has something damaging to say! We can only guess what that is. But I have never heard Russia lie! Unlike America where everything they say is a lie. Without any bias it seems that American really needs to turn to dirty tricks and press control in order for the absurdity of what they say to stick. In a free press where countries around the world were free to talk the US narrative would quickly start to look stupid and absurd.

Really basic stuff makes no sense from the US. US and UK are continually at war, yet claim to be interest in peace. US and UK claim to be about freedom and yet the 1000s of tons of bombs they need to drop each year to force people to be free look more like control of people. US claims to be right, yet spends 40% of global military spending. Clearly the US thinks Might is Right. And anyone who needs that much Might is actually wrong. US claims to be about freedom, and yet it an ally of Saudi Arabia which is the least free place on Earth. US claims to be about freedom and yet you are 10x more likely to be put in prison by the US Government than the Chinese government. West says its interested in free press, and Chinese firewall is Dictatorship and yet most Chinese closing down of media is actually in retaliation for the West closing down foreign media. It is actually the West that is trying to control global media. The list of nonsense is endless. Everything the US says is just nonsense and it seems they can only maintain this level of rubbish by eliminating any other media that challenges them.

Well I have no idea what RT said that was so worrying to the West. But now I want to know, cos we know the West is always talking nonsense. Now I want to hear what the Bullshitters think is bullshit! I also want to know who is so powerful in the West that they can close down the ideas of other countries. we are not free in the West and its possible we are even less free than the countries we are told by the bullshitters are not free.

The heavy hand of the West really has stung them and undermined everything they said they stood for!

Plus we know the West has been running Empires around the globe for centuries, which have sort to control people and extract their wealth. The West can accuse China and Russia, but really the onus is on the West to demonstrate that it has turned over a new leaf and represents freedom rather than Imperial Capitalist control. The West hurling stones at other countries looks a lot like the West trying to distract people away from its own Totalitarianism.

All fingers point at the West!

Poverty: its relative (yet again). Elon Musk is amongst the poorest people in history!

Made this point a hundred times, but distilling again.

Are we rich or poor?

How do we answer this question?

What we tend to do is look at other people. In other words it is relative.

The family at the end of the road has 3 cars we think. We only have 1. We think we are poor.

The family on the other end of town only has a P reg car from the 1990s. Ours is 69. we are richer.

But we can chose anything we like. My colleague at work gets paid more, but does less work. He is richer. His wife is uglier than mine. His dog just died, mine is still alive. And so it goes on.

Wealth is relative.

This game we play gets played out at all scale. United States has an median salary of $54,132 per year while in Nepal it is $8293.92 per year. We like to think then that Americans are richer than Nepali. In fact many Nepali leave Nepal to work in America so they can earn more and feel more wealthy. And Americans are reluctant to live in Nepal because they will feel poorer. In fact this logic expands into more dramatic actions than that. Some people in the US feel that the Nepalese need economic reconstruction so they can produce and earn more because they are poor. Various international groups have been set up to achieve exactly this based upon ideas that some people are poor and some rich.

It all depends upon whether there is such a thing as Absolute Poverty. We started realising that we look at othetr people to find out who is rich and poor, so we established that wealth is Relative. But we seem to have driftred into the idea that some people are "actually" poor--not just relatively--and they need to be helped to become richer. Is this actually true?

Well the most famous analysis of this is in "Man's search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl about what he learned from living in Auschwitz during WW2. That by any measure of poverty was Real Poverty. Threatened with endless hard labour, minimal rations and the increasing threat of starvation and even murder as the war progressed. Yet Mr Frankl observed that even within this appalling world there was relative wealth. People dishing out the soup would take a scoop from the bottom for their friends so they got some actual vegetables and meat in the otherwise watery rations. Not sure if he says this but even death might be seen as the better option compared with endless hard work in freeing conditions with poor and worn footwear and clothing.

In fact there is no such thing as absolute poverty. Wealth and Poverty are always determined by comparing with other people.

This is a really important thing to understand.

It means that the richest person can still feel poor if they compare with someone richer of luckier than them. It means that the poorest person can still feel rich if they compare with someone worse off than them.

This is why gratitude is the key to true wealth. If we note the actual things around us then we will always feel rich. Even the existence of the Sun is a miracle beyond any other wealth. And even greater than that is our life itself. We are already spoiled with riches.

This would be the key way in which Capitalism is a false religion. It is based upon a misunderstanding if life. You can always become richer, and so you are never actually rich.

It is why no matter how much we achieve or how much capital we accumulate we are always at equal risk of feeling poor or rich as they these are not actually anything to do with these things.

Poor and rich is simply what mood we are in and nothing else.

Wow how many lives wasted struggling to be rich and running from poor. But sadly this is the dead end avenue in which the Western world has gotten itself. Somehow we forgot what wealth was, and have been tricked into seeking false wealth and in the process robbing ourselves of true wealth. Everyone in the West is amongst the poorest humans ever known because we have forgotten what wealth is.

And unfortunately struggling--in what is now and endless struggle to double down on our bad investment--we are destroying everything and the Planet is now in critical danger of being destroyed. All we can think of is moving to other planets to try and escape our ignorance. When you don't understand what wealth is you can run to the edge of the universe and still never be rich.

Elon Musk is almost the poorest man in history, and his struggle for wealth shows how impoverished he is. Everything he seeks to gain is actually a compensation for that poverty and not knowing true wealth. His desire to leave the planet and colonise other planets underlines this poverty. If he cannot feel rich on Earth how much harder to feel rich on other planets! All how ironic!

Oh dear Zelenskyy and West seems you don't speak for all Ukrainians

War is always an illusion because it never fits into the narratives of the warmongers.

This makes it very hard for soldiers because they will never know what they are fighting and dying for. They may believe one thing, or have been told one thing but its never the whole truth. Every soldier who has ever fought and died has always necessarily only known half the truth and so has always given their life for a lie.

Case in point here in the case of MH17. A Russian and a Ukrainian have been charged with bringing down the plane and killing 298 people.

Apart from the tragedy that yet another civil war has caused, there is the obvious question why a Ukrainian is firing Russian missiles against the Ukrainians.

According to the West we are sending weapons and support to the Ukrainians who are all fighting the Russians and Zelenskyy represents all Ukrainians in their fight against Russia.

Oh dear. It's not true. Plenty of Ukrainians have no affinity for either the West or Zelenskyy who assumed power as part of this sudden wave of pro-European sentiment that seems to have erupted from no where in 2014. The elections just 2 years earlier in 2012 did not indicate this.

Well broadly the discovery that the US is involved makes this look like yet another CIA plot. Had the Ukrainians decided it by themselves it would be more believable but with the CIA behind them the result is all very suspicious. Most famously there was the counter revolution in Iran in 1953 where the MI6 and CIA persuaded the people to reinstate the Western backed Shah and put Iran back under Western control. Its easy to do and the rise of Western backed leaders in Ukraine just fits the pattern of CIA coups around the world over the last 70 years.

But now we find out that not all Ukrainians have been fooled by the West. Plenty have been fooled by the East too. This is how civil wars really happen.

Which all raises the question why get involved. Its all lies which just underlies what a waste of time it is. I mean waste of time for those who want to do more with their lives than just chasing shadows.

But there are plenty happy to chase their tails and shadow box their reflections so I guess we let them get on with it.

So what is Enlightenment?

Ain't this the on going question?

So the thing that holds us back is "standing in the wrong place." But the problem is where do we stand?

The place we probably never considered before is that we habitually stand within ourselves.

And when someone says be compassionate, or be generous, or non-self, or think of others we tend to just leave ourselves and stand inside someone else. This is where this current stream of the blog took off last summer. In fact we can stand wherever we like. If we have children we may very well stand with them before even our self. If we are a soldier we may stand with our King or Country before even ourselves, or we stand with our comrades in arms. We can stand anywhere. And attachment is when we either don't want to let go and move or don't even realise we are standing somewhere.

But all this standing is flawed because we are picking conditional platforms on which to stand. All the things in the universe are temporary. They have at one point not existed and have been made from other things that are not themselves and will one day dissolve back into the universe. And that is not a "merge" with the universe: they will become fully extinct like they never existed. Whatever we are standing on will one day dissolve. Nothing in the universe is permanently safe.

Now that last bit if very hard for those who still need a corporeal, tangible place to stand. We look through our senses and find things to believe in and on which to found our lives. But this is mistake #1. Nothing in our senses is a solid place to stand.

Then we make mistake #2 and decide to stand with our mind and consciousness. But when we are asleep and consciousness has disintegrated, where shall we stand then? Consciousness and mind are not stable places to stand either. Mind is always changing like the weather, sometimes focused, sometimes loose, sometimes upset, sometimes still.

But its not our failure to find a solid place to stand, the problem is in trying to stand some where permanently at all!

That desire to place our metaphysical feet in a solid place that will not change and give us a fixed vantage point to look out on the universe. That very grasping is the entirely unnecessary and pointless problem.

So why do we do it?

Well religions try to stop this with God. By putting our faith in God who is beyond all understanding we get used to not placing our feet in the corporeal mortal world.

The great test of our spiritual advancement is to what extent the world affects us. The less we stand in the world, the less our foundations are upset when it crumbles.

But we can't fake this. We can turn ourselves into a stone and pretend that because nothing affects us we are hard and strong and enlightened. A stone is not enlightened.

The measure of our strength is the opposite. It is the degree to which we can open up to the world and let all its difficulties and upsets flood in without fear, and still handle it. That is what not being affected is.

When we have our feet in this corporeal world then we become protective of the parts on which we stand and that makes us fearful and defensive. We are not free and we get dragged in.

Enlightenment is the opposite of this. And the religious person, because they understand this at some level, is much better at shifting where they stand when it starts to crumble.

Now death is the ultimate crumbling and we only really discover how much we have stood on the bit of the world called "our body" or "self" when we face death.

Those who understand that we have no need for feet in this world at all, they are liberated from all these concerns. They are free to let the whole world be as it is, to live without the need to protect what they have unwisely or unconsciously become stuck on. When change is needed they are free to change.

WE CANT FAKE THIS. We can't pretend we don't care when cherished things are taken from us, we can't fake fear of death and loss of self. If we are standing on these, and getting support and sustainence from these then it will hurt when they are taken.

But God or the Unconditional is something we can't grasp at. It is not a new place to stand. It is getting used to not standing in a fixed place at all.

I believe we can accelerate the learning of this by gaining deep meditation states which step by step remove the world and reveal the unconditional in ever greater purity. But of course this is far beyond mental "discernment."

The brain works by discerning things. When we birdwatch we see a bird, or is it a bat or something else flying. If it's a bird we can watch what it is doing and see it going about its life and make observations. How it rests, or flies, or how it eats, or what song it makes. And all the while the brain is deciding whether to go this way or that. It is always seeking this or that. This is discursive thinking. we want to know what it is and what it is not. This very blog started by wanting to know what Enlightenment is. And initially we will struggle to get our brains around this because we are limited by this or that. But Enlightenment is beyond this or that, and discursive thinking. Indeed looking down the telescope of discursive thinking and playing the game of this or that means we are completely missing the fact that we are thinking. It doesn't matter what we are thinking or questioning, we need observe the fact that we are doing this at all. Clearly being aware we are thinking at all is far superior to anything we can think.

And so the onion gets unwrapped. When we are seeking answers to a question we have stood in the land of thinking. Whatever we find we will always be bound to the fact we are thinking, and unable to escape the borders of the land of thinking and go beyond. This is Descartes. His decision to Doubt is where the whole saga started and ended. Once standing in the Land of Doubt he was always going to find that he couldn't Doubt that he was doubting. It was the starting condition. It is where he chose to stand. And all he discovered was his initial decision.

Likewise starting with the question "What is Enlightenment?" has already doomed the investigation because we have chosen question and answer as our method and we are already standing there and bound to that.

To Enlighten we need unpeel this and gradually resist the desire to make a stand anywhere in the quest to become free.

We start with Freedom but then, like Descartes, we make some heroic decision to embark on a journey and strike off in some direction and immediately get ourselves bound and enslaved to a journey and leave our Freedom behind.

Someone repeatedly questioning a monk about what is Enlightenment was getting no answer and after many years decided there was no more point and stormed off out of the monastery. The monk called him by name and he stopped and turned around, and the monk said in that moment you were enlightened. I think the point here is that the questioning mind is not the place to stand if you want freedom. Too many rules, too much hard work. But when someone calls you by name and you instinctively turn around, it is simple honest, and involves no thought, and yet who would deny it was real? We turned around! We are engaged with reality even when we are not thinking. We are already in touch with reality before we even settle down to answer a question, before we even decide where to place our feet. That place we come from is closer to enlightenment than anything we have decided to do.

And this "source" comes from really profound and almost unbelievable places. "Time" is actually something we think! we do not come from time. If we think about it time is built from memories for the past, plans and expectations for the future and then the things going on now. But we ignore most of what is going on now, cos it seems mostly irrelevant. We don't look out of the train window because we are thinking about where we are going and what we will say and do when we get there. The future is much more important than the present it seems.

But actually this is ridiculous isn't it. We don't really know what will happen. Chances are all those things we planned to say to our friend when we meet won't ever come out, we'll end up talking about other things. I always think meditation teachers over do this, in that some planning can be useful, but its not a wise existence. Far more important than saying the right thing to someone when we meet them, is realising that the "future" does not exist. It's at best a fantasy that bears some resemblance to what will happen anyway so what benefit in making a fake version now, and at worst it never happens and is completely fake and pointless. True getting on the train was linked to expecting to meet our friend, but how often does something happen and they can't make it or something unexpected happens. The point is when we are getting on the train to meet our friend, we are just getting on the train to meet our friend, why not just get on the train to meet our friend as it is right now. We are not actually meeting our friend yet, we need get in the train first. And so on. Each moment of the journey from home to friend has its own reality that we can sail along without really dwelling on the future or past. Now if we ever get the chance to just sail along without reference to past or future (no memory and no imagination) then we will find there is just Now! "Now" is a stage on which the world happens. The Now-Stage is actually permanent and unconditional. This is how it allows the world and time to happen within it. If the Now-Stage was actually something then the world could not be this. If the Now-Stage was Green then the world could not be green. If it was "large" then the world could not be large. This I think is what Heideggar means by Being hiding itself. By the time we have seen that the universe is large we have left the Present Moment or the Now-Stage which cannot be large itself.

Present Moment is a very special "place" to get to. If we want a place to stand this is it. Meditation is the way. Long periods of time sitting with actual events as they happen. Not as we think them, or expect them, or remember them. Just as they are. Its hard. It takes practice to free ourselves from the bad habits. In breathing meditation we look only at the breath and explore it as it is. Not as we remember it, or as we expect it to be, or as we think it but by trying to get through to the fact its actually there. Something that is really there. Something that is really happening.

It hard in this multimedia age where we are constantly being distracted by fake media that needs us to read or watch and enter the world of imagination. Even a "live" news report is not "really" happening, its "over there" in some imaginary place. I mean if we were there and also saw it on the TV at the same time then we have some reality, but TV can be recorded and replayed: reality never can! A Present Moment approach would simply be to note that a notification has popped up, and we are just going to note it, and then note the activity in our brain that wants to find out what its about and just keep watching everything going on as it happens, but not engaging with it and reading the notification and triggering all the imagination and thinking it will start. This kind of watching if called Vipassana or Mindfulness meditation. We are only interested that things are going on, but not what is going on.

It quickly get impossible to think about. Present Moment is not sandwiched between past and future. These things do not really exist, they fade away as the onion gets unpeeled.  And the Present Moment expands to fill everything. This is the timeless present from which all things come and everything happens. When we have a memory it pops into the Present Moment and when we go into it, it is like opening a book or switching on the TV. This is fine as long as we don't forget to close it and come back out into timeless Present Moment.

And so it is with this blog. Having run at full speed into the question of "What is Enlightenment?" it turns out this very quest is in the wrong direction and the further we go down that road the more chains we accumulate and the more ensnared and unfree we become. The right way is the opposite way. Look at the world from which that question came, and which supports that question, and the mind and reality into which this exploration right here has popped into.

And ultimately to realise that no where in all this space is there anywhere we need to run to in order to stand. We were fine before we even began.

Okay everything can be misunderstood. That can be a call for people to become stones. If we start from the timeless Present Moment in pure freedom then what is there to do. I may as well continue as I am. Except that likely means carry on protecting the precious places I call home and mine. There is nowhere to rest in all this world. If we are complacent and hiding somewhere safe then we may well be on the way to being a stone. This does not mean start running from this spot to prove we are not bound to it either. That is even worse. Where are we going to run to if there is no where to rest? Its because there is no where to rest that we stop running! We may as well be where we are!! That is real rest. It is not running to finding a spa retreat somewhere to escape the world of noise and struggle. Peace is never over there. If we need to move to get to Peace we are not at Peace. It is realising that there is no Peace in this world and so no point searching for it that leads us to true Peace. Like the search for Enlightenment, we can't get there by swapping "this" for "that". This and That are both peace and enlightenment if we lose any wish to change from one to the other. Its this realising that anywhere is good to stand that is the foundation of Enlightenment. Jesus died in his own blood and excrement on a cross. Even the worse places in the world have God in them. There is no need to run from anywhere, it is all temporary corporeal existence even sitting on a dream luxury yacht is still standing in this same world of temporary existence. Forget the yacht. Forget over there. We start where we are. That is where God, Peace and Enlightenment reside. We cannot improve anything by moving. And yet if we become bound to here, if we start to like it and don't want to move, then imperceptibly we have grown roots and made it a place we want to stand. This is the very subtle way that the path to Peace and Enlightenment can become tainted and become a trap.

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So if I uproot from the world and tread only lightly with a mind so wide I can embrace the unconditional will I live forever? Is this immortality? The problem is such a question and conception is still based upon standing with the body or some corporeal conditional thing. Who will live forever? What is there that needs to live forever? Whatever that is, that we want to live forever is just the place where we are standing. Once we no longer stand anywhere then there is nothing we then particularly want to live forever.

It seems crazy. We are so habituated to looking at the the world through our eyes, and living inside this body. Feeding it, listening to its thoughts, acting out its desires and travelling around with it. So habituated to being with it that we come to think we are it. That we stand within it, and its fortunes are our fortunes. Well that is the subtlety. There isn't anywhere else to go. We may as well hang out in this body. But the point is that we don't stand in this body. There is only this body, no one separate that is standing inside it. When we face death it is the body that dies, but because there is no one separate standing in that body there are no foundations shaken by the death. Living forever becomes irrelevant cos there is no entity seeking to stand solidly on anything anyway.

The temptation is always to conjure up some soul or spirit to stand on. That might even be immortal, and if I believe in that and base my belief on that I am safe. But its not helping, its just pampering to the need to stand on something solid. Give up this standing. There is nothing to stand on, and no one in need of a place to stand!

Some pitfalls of Meditation

So I have been meditating on and off for over 20 years and I'm still a beginner! There are many subtle things here that grow more relevant the deeper we get.

(1) Meditate regularly.

Why is this so important. Already blogged but the usual reason we do anything is motivated by the need for something. Often we meditate to over come some barrier, or to feel better, or because we think it will be beneficial to us. This is classic unenlightened thinking because it revolves around a central figure who is commanding the show. This fake phantom does not exist, but it controls our lives all the same. So at the beginning (i.e. for me still after 22 years!) the motivation to meditate is still in someway bound to ego. I want to be more successful, I want to control emotions, I want to feel better, I want to be enlightened. Everyone has to start somewhere, but this is still born from the mistake of ego.

When we meditate regularly our ego will probably fight it. "Do it later, what I want is more important". "It's boring and no fin, serve me and do something more interesting." "You are not a meditator, you are a tough person who needs no help, meditation is for weak people or "spiritual" nuts and hippies". In some way or another the fake self, the small and superficial and actually dead (literally the celluloid hero of our brains) image we have of our true living self will try and derail the meditation.

Meditation is our master that we must submit to. And that sounds like Islam, but its the same point made in Islam and all the religions that to get in sync with reality we first need to get out of sync with the illusion of self. When God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, I believe "He" did not do it so much as they brought it upon themselves by manufacturing an inner self that could now reflect upon itself and so quite happily hide and ignore God - where God is essentially Reality. Mankind has this ability to retreat into fantasy and imagination and create unreal things, and the biggest is this inner belief and faith in a self hidden inside. If meditation does only one thing, it is to bring us out from that inner fantasy world into reality and abandon that inner shadow that we think is a true self.

(2) Meditate for other people

Essentially the same as above, but who are we meditating for? At the start we are meditating for our self. We want the benefits of this mysterious thing. As meditation progresses we aim to lift that grasp we have on it. On one level if I am improved by meditation then so is the world around me. The benefits leak out. When  I would have got angry and hurt someone, no I seek to solve the problem in a more intelligent way that leaves no seeds of resentment or pain that will flourish to create future problems. But ultimately it becomes more clear that meditation benefits everyone and then eventually no one. But not "no one" that the ego might pick and go "ah ha told you waste of time, come back and do what I want" no that is "no one" as in "Ego you are not worth benefitting cos you don't even exist, and neither do all the other egos clamouring for personal attention and benefit, the benefit has been to see that all this daily activity is misguided and serves no one." If anyone is to benefit we first have to get over this fixation on separate individual selves. It always breaks up co-operation and peace. No one will ever be happy when they have only 1 eye that sees them self. That uncomfortable fact for the Ego is that it lives in a world of many selves, most importantly those parent selves which actually created it and without which it wouldn't even exist. Ouch! Take that ego.

So really meditation is for everyone and no one. And least of all our self. However small steps. If it helps motivation to think we are benefitting from meditation then that is not untrue.

* little addendum. In this material world it seems crazy to chant and meditate for other people. What is there is some magical ether that conveys good wishes and benefits to other people even without them doing anything. Well belief in such an ether is no less crazy than belief in a "me" hidden inside this body and mind somewhere**. People in glass houses should not throw stones. We are all crazy who have not yet seen the truth!

** Things are no so simple however. We do not extinguish the self in this move. This is not nihilism we do not throw anything away, we just see it from a different angle. We are there, there is still a self and existence. But the point is that this "presence" this knowledge that "we are alive" Woo Hoo! Party time, this "life" whatever it is, does not come from a hidden thing inside that was born with us and accompanies us that holds our memories, and what we "are" and sits there like a name tag making us different from other people and the world. And which eventually must hit the brick wall of death and then either go smash through to some magical after life or disintegrate into blackness (somehow). That is the fantasy born entirely of our imaginations. The truth exists even for people who have lost their memories. they can sit there and say I have forgotten, so memory for starters is just a tag on to what we are. And we don't spend every moment of every day sitting with our memories. They come and go, we recall them from who knows where. So they are not part of us. And in fact none of that list is party of us. Even our name was given to us by our parents, unless we chose another and that proves that name is stuck on top and not really part of us. And then anyway what was the name of that person before we got a new name? Indeed what was our name before we got a name at all? So even our name is not us. There is nothing that is us! We have no identity, it is all manufactured and stuck on top like a badly fitting coat. The source of all that we call life comes straight out of the Present Moment right now. It doesn't come from a hidden person called "me" or "my life." Rather the other way around. Faced with what is actually a miracle of existence we then grasp around and grab at things, one of which is this self we are given by parents and society and we hold on to that. Its no more than a name badge. And yes its not that important.

So meditation goes far beyond the limits of this small self in this small corner of the world that we like to think of as ours and which we normally grasp onto as all we have. Meditation really encompasses the whole universe and all of existence. But we have to start somewhere so we start with a small self, sitting in its small corner of the universe, with the door closed and the rest all locked out. But we don't need move to access the whole universe, that is both the reality of sitting meditation but also a metaphor of where we start bound to a physical body and self.

p.s. worth watching any desires that want to escape this small self, perhaps the Ego wants to be as big and important as the universe! That was all just metaphor. We already are the universe, it is the ego that makes us small.

== there are more that have occurred to me, I forget for now will update...

Its not just pie they put in those!

2:42 OMG it will take more than a while to get your head around it! "Its not just pie they put in those" is the essence of why the world and we ourselves do not exist... its not just me they put in me! Me is not an ingredient. OMG the man is Buddha.

https://fb.watch/gJfg_PlAxh/

Problems have an inside and outside, Meaning and Puzzle of Life.

 Puzzle:

Milan + Chicago + Venice - Islamabad

----------------------------------------------

    Xanadu + Vancouver + Irkutsk

OK made that too easy. But one answer is: Lahore + Xi'an + Ipoh + Xalapa


Which is 69 or LXIX in roman numerals. Realising that Roman Numerals are involved is one obvious key to unlocking the puzzle. 

So to solve this requires 2 separate stages.

(1) Put it in context (the outside)
(2) Process the inside.

The context is to realise that the capital letters of the names map onto Roman Numerals (MCLXVI) which is outside the puzzle. And then we plug that into standard arithmetic displayed in the puzzle (addition, subtraction, division).

OK actually arithmetic is outside the puzzle too. We need map those symbols onto procedures we have drummed into us at school. Or we can enter into a calculator. But once inside its just known steps to complete the task.

So in fact all puzzles have an outside context. They need to be hooked into a context. And once done then the inside "computations" are clockwork.

Take 10+26 = _ That is a piece of pure maths. But unless we are number theorists we'll never look at it alone. It may map onto millimetre distances as we measure something. Once we get the answer 36 we then map it back outside to the context and get 36mm which is useful in the context.

The interesting thing about interesting lateral puzzles is they are deliberately designed to require us to search for a context, to find a "sense". Once this is done the vertical reasoning "inside" is straightforward.

I've noticed this. When people say "its too hard" what they really mean is that they have not established the context properly.

Not particularly useful picture cos the pieces have no picture and are only 2 types, but these puzzles are interesting. Each piece usually contains part of a picture. We can easily look "inside" and see that with no difficulty. The inside is fine. The puzzle exists in finding its place within the whole picture and that requires going outside the piece. We have another clue as well which is the piece shape, but that only relates to the immediate neighbour context. I realise writing this how skilful it is to create a jigsaw. Suppose lots of pieces are the same colour like they are sky. If they are also the same shape then we make the jigsaw really easy. On other hand if lots of pieces which are the same shape have different patterns on them then we make the jigsaw really hard. Anyway the solution is when the pattern inside each piece and the shape of each piece both have a meaningful context.

I look at Wittgenstein's language games here. "Meaning" can be seen with something that is identifiable by itself for example marks on a page like this word "stationery." But those marks have no meaning until they get put in context.

Here are two contexts into which that "stationary" word fits. And suddenly in each "outside" context the "inside" magically gains "meaning."

In general the "inside" has no meaning without an "outside." Obviously the inside must still be there, but it has no meaning.

In meditation we are seeking this meaningless inner state. We distract the running around discursive mind that is always searching for context and meaning. We stick it on watching the breath and we train it like a dog to sit there and be calm. Eventually it lays down and stops running and then we see the man and the pile of papers without a meaning. We no longer apply the word "stationary" to them. Its true he is not moving, and its true that the paper is stationary but we drop this "outside" and just see the "inside" for what it "really" is. Now extraordinary things happen when we stop being "outside." When you drop "inside" to what the thing "really" is you enter a completely different world: one that feels like home! In fact once inside we realise why we always feel like something is missing in life: we are always outside.

Problem with these words "inside" and "outside" is they have context themselves. We probably think:

But actually both these must have an "inside" and an "outside" themselves! There is what they are, and there is the context into which they are found. The outside in this case is the blog discussing the very nature of "inside" and "outside", or "being" and "context" itself. I add something there. I called the "inside" the "being." The inside is what is there: the city names in the puzzle at the start. The outside is how we encode them and give them meaning: which is realising that the starting letters are also Roman Numerals and then we have a simple math puzzle. We can call the inside that has not yet found a context the "Being" while the inside in context, and with meaning, now becomes the "being." Possibly slightly unexpected there are many beings, but one one Being. Before context is applied how can things be more than one! To become many they need be slotted into place. When building a wall any brick will do for the builder adding the next brick, but once its in place that brick has a crucial role holding up the bricks above it and linking with the bricks beside. Before "Being" has been put in place its is anything and everything. That is kind of fudging it, it doesn't sound right. The problem here is that when we speak we are trying to get outside, with Being the moment we get outside and find what it is we are outside. To be inside we must resist going outside and just sit with Being in all its meaninglessness, but all its potential.      

So "inside" and "outside" are much more profound that just the words being used here.

In meditation we can start to discover what "inside" really means. And it is nothing like what we think it is. Problem with thinking it, is that we do that by applying context, which means we are going outside to find out what is inside. This is why I reckon Heideggar ends up with this paradox that "Being is hidden in the process of revealing beings." In order for the discursive mind to investigate "inside" it runs outside to get a "establishing shot." In the sit-com Friends many scenes are filmed on this set.  

But it is standard film etiquette to have an establishing or location shot first so we know "where we are." So we get this shot first before going on to the actual scene.

Its quite natural without an establishing shot to wonder where we are. And in fact whenever we are faced with some "thing" we quickly run "outside" to get a location shot, which in thinking is called the "meaning."

This is no small thing. We spend our whole lives looking for a meaning! We are trying to get "outside" our lives to look in and see "where we are" and "what the bigger picture is" and "how do I fit in to the bigger picture." This entire struggle is actually avoiding "Being" itself. And we can get very anxious and confused when we can't get outside and get our head around things. We start to run (in our heads) trying to find out what is going on, trying to get the establishing shot. That part of the film is not there, it never got films, we haven't missed anything: there is no establishing shot to life. We live in the set, that is all there is! Physicists will spend forever trying to get the Establishing Shot. It is currently Big Band, but that is currently being challenged by JWST and even if it is Big Bang we wonder what the Establishing shot to that is: where did the Big Bang come from? 

As Heideggar notes by the time we have a "thing" the "Being" is obscured. That is by the time we have run outside to see what it is, we are outside and no longer inside!

There must be a story here. A person wakes up in a wonderful hotel room. It has everything they need. It is paradise. But they are troubled cos they have forgotten and don't know where they are. They call up a friend and say this is such a wonderful place, I can't describe how amazing this is, you should come and join me. And the friend says, "well were are you?" And the guy says, I have no idea , I woke up in here (born) and its amazing but I have no idea where "here" is. So his friend says, well go outside and see what street you are on. But, protests the guy I have no key, how will I get back in. And the friend on the phone says, we'll at least you'll know what you are trying to get in to. So the guy in the flat leaves and gets the address which is "Paul" (his name) but then can't get back in.

This is the essence of the problem of mind and life. And perhaps its even what Genesis is about. The snake tricks us into knowledge of good and evil, but in so doing we are no longer in Paradise.

The importance of Meditation really cannot be stressed enough. By forgetting the name of the place we want to go we will end up there. The name of the place is Paradise, but we can only get there by forgetting that. Another story possible there!

Note all the pictures in this blog come in pairs. With meditation and actual Being there is not two or many, there is only One.

Much is spoken in spirituality about The One. To many it is also called God. Not so in Buddhism which removes all tricks really stops us trying to get a location shot. Islam is good in that it bans images and statues so we can't get a picture of God either. Hinduism does it the other way. Give the viewer a million views of God so that they cannot fix on any one. Mahayana Buddhism also does this with the countless Buddhas in all directions. We are all Buddha they say. Buddha was not just a man call Siddhartha Shakyamuni. You can't get "outside" Buddha. Buddha is just the "inside." And when there is not "outside" or "location shot" then all scenes, inner worlds, people, lives blend into One. Paul is actually no different from Joanna. Those words are just the "outside."

So returning to the top. The puzzle of Life can in fact only be solved by stopping trying to solve it. If we ever found a meaning to life, we would actually only have achieved getting outside and losing it. What we "have" that appears to have no meaning is what we truly have. Because to give it meaning will mean getting outside and losing it. If we stop running from the apparently meaningless and just sit with it and go into it then we are entering Life itself. We don't need to know we are sitting in "Central Perk" to have a good time, we don't need to know who we are to have a good life. We don't need answers to the big questions, we don't need Meaning. It doesn't have to make sense. Instead we need to go into it and see what is really there, engage with it, and sit with it. When the names and "beings" drop away then the Being will reveal itself. 

Worrying about Death

Still kind of ancestor season. I heard yesterday of a Buddhist teacher who in the depths of COVID had contacted his master to say he thought he was going to die. The master replied "so what." That contains all the teachings to me. (Well obviously that is master to his student, you wouldn't say that to anyone.) But the point here is that the unconditional mind does not care for the day to day of the conditional. Body and Consciousness are just sounds in the silence. The silence is still there long after they are gone. Worrying about dying is like realising that the music concert will end - obviously in the auditorium at the time that is everything, but in the grand scheme outside it is nothing.