When someone close dies we never recover, but we don't need to because the process of moving forward (on our belly or otherwise) involves growing into our new skin and letting go of the one we had with them.
It is more a matter of letting go of self, rather than some statement about the self.
We can hold tightly to lots of things. During a sports match involving the team we support we can get seriously tense and drawn in. We are gripping the fortunes of our team and holding tight. It is an exciting and tense time, but we are able to let go at some stage to get on and enjoy other things.
But with self it is not like a football match that gets scheduled and we see the draw and we plan and we go and see: Self is nearly always there. It seems impossible to get away from. In fact the idea of getting away from it seems scary. Isn't that death? What am I without a self? Is not self central to me? Letting go of self looks like letting go of life. But this is the whole misunderstanding.
We are not our self.
At least not the self we think we are. The self we think we are is like character in a film. When we talk of letting go we mean no longer adopting this view of our self, or at least being open to others, or perhaps none. The hero in a film is not in every scene, and neither are we in every scene of our life!
So how do you get beyond this limited, relative view?
Breathing meditation is actually multifaceted and extraordinary. The root of it is the (any) sensation arising from the act of breathing. If we examine this sensation we will find no self!
What a crazy claim. Am I not breathing?
Well crudely no you are not.
When asleep you breath quite happily. Who is doing that? In fact we may never have even thought about that, and now fishing for an answer we decide it is me. But that captures very much the fakeness of this self. There was no self present while we were asleep breathing. We literally just made that up to fill the gap. While we are asleep dreaming or whatever, breathing goes on all by itself.
Now we are aware of this because when we go to hold our breath we find we take over our breathing. Now there is self. But if there is self and deliberate action in holding breath, there was not before. Almost all the time in our life breathing happens by itself. Just as digestion in our gut, or heart beats or in fact almost everything. It all just happens by itself. Even the sensation in the skin caused by breathing happens by itself. There is really very little room for self in the breath in fact.
So sitting there quietly watching our breath we find that little by little the breath is just a sensation. I say little by little, I mean month after month or even year after year. Becoming subtle minded takes a lot of practice.
We may come to think about what this letting go of self is like and its really no big deal. But in another way it is extraordinary. If we think about all the philosophy and metaphysics and religion and spirituality trying to link the body to the self it is bewildering. We have souls for example which are selves that live inside bodies. We have mind/body dualisms in Descartes. We have solipsism where only 1 self, me, exists. We have God and gods. It is bewildering. Then we look back at the breath and nothing is simpler.
So why does it get complex? The misunderstanding is through the self grasping, or trying to own things.
Once we see the breath as just a sensation we have let go of self. It is now simple.
If we examine this situation however quickly the self jumps in. Depending on our education we may leap in and grasp at and try to own the consciousness of the breath. We argue that the breath is physical and real, but the sensation is mental and occurs in my brain, or in my consciousness or is somehow mine and linked to me. This is exactly what grasping at self looks like.
We follow this up with the now completely nonsense argument: if the sensation was not mine how could I feel it. For me to feel it, I must be bound to it. We forget that the sensation was there first, and we already sensed it in order to then try and grasp it.
And that is just an example of how self marches in after the event and starts laying claim to thing, grasping them, holding them and pretending it is inseparable and intrinsic.
Now this is all fun and games. We live our whole life in an arm lock with our self. But then the issue of death turns up. Suddenly self goes into crisis. It realises the ship it has been aboard is going to sink and it wants to get off. It tries to let go, push it all away and disown the mortal body. This panic is what we call dying. Dying is not the death of the body. Dying is the weird thing we can't really get our head around, that thing which we cat even work out what or who dies, that thing that we have no idea about at all in fact, which is very weird in a world where we think we know everything. But this is not real dying, this is just our self panicking about holding and grasping at the body. We then think we can just let go of the mortal body and somehow drift off as an immortal being. If we look again this is not what happens.
However small caveat firstly, letting go of self is very unlikely to happen in a flash of inspiration like it did for some Huineng (638-713AD) or Eckhart Tolle (1948-) and us much more likely to be a slow dawning as we drop and step beyond previous habits and certainties. During this time there are constant changing grips on the situation as we pull up on one thing to get off another. It is certainly beneficial and of no problem for those struggling with death and grief to hold ideas of souls and eternal lives. These are not wrong. What is seen as problematic eventually is holding on to anything solid and permanently. That said where is the problem with holding on to self in death?
Going back to the breath we saw that the breath happened pretty much by itself, and only once breath and sensation had happened did self turn up and try and own it. I say own it, that is the same as creating a story and description where we can place our self in the central character like when we say "I am breathing." This makes no sense. Breathing was going on fine before I turned up!
The same is true for the whole of the body and our life. We could go through our whole life without the self turning up once. I think most animals do. The decision to involve the self is not a necessity and it comes about just to create a "photo" of what is going on. That photo we take is not really us, and chances are we take a few and only keep the good one. This is how real this self is.
Actual true self is beyond our grasp because it is the one doing the grasping! It is the one who brings little self in, takes snapshots and goes grasping. But while it is ignorant of its true boundlessness it grasps for itself and takes the form of this small, plastic fake self that tries to get involved in everything and tries to own and grasp hold of everything. Little self is characterised by grasping and trying to own and get close to things. True self by contrast is characterised by letting go, easing back and taking in the wider view.
So the issue of death is no issue for the body or the true self because they are not grasping anything that is dying. There is no sudden realisation that the ship we are aboard is sinking cos we are the ship. We can't get off, because we were never aboard. There is no panic and nothing to let go of or do. Dying is just like the breath, it just happens all by itself plain and simple. No one dies, there is only dying just as no one lives there is only living.
Apparently Georgia popular protests against overseas investment... hmmm we know whose behind those and it isn't the Georgians! What do they care?
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/14/georgias-lawmakers-brawl-as-controversial-foreign-agent-bill-set-to-pass
CIA is definitely losing its touch. I guess when you try the same thing too many times it becomes a bit obvious.
When would the general Georgian population care about, or even know about, something like this? And why would it top Western News?
This is just--yawn--standard US pressure to keep doors open to US Capitalists so that they can steal from countries. Doesn't take much money to pay off a few people and then set cameras to make it look like a mob.. Hollywood does it every day!
Question though is why does the UK press not point out the obvious? Sad truth is UK has had an open door to the US ever since Thatcher completed Churchill's treachery and we are long ago terminally infected. Georgia has a lesson for Brits here: we need this policy ourselves, and when the media magically materialises apparently popular protests in support of US interests then understand exactly how the CIA operates (Brits know this for sure cos we actually taught the CIA this technique in 1953). Cui bono always.
On the back of a flyer for a nature festival are the "stalls and sponsors."
It's can't really be a festival of "Nature" as everything is already Nature like the sunrise and our beating heart.
Surely this is rather a festival of whatever crumbs are metered out by Capitalism and the Owners of industry. In fact it's the antithesis of Nature as Nature is what is left after you remove Capitalism. I may purchase a hip replacement from a Capitalist but the original hip comes from, belongs to and returns to Nature. Sad days when "festivals" like this exist.
Here's a map you won't see very often: global literacy levels. That has to be the key map to understanding how developed and civilised a country is. The colour coding hides quite a lot: for example hard to see but North Korea is 100% while South Korea under US occupation is only 98% (which is what we would expect). Under US occupation UK literacy rates are falling too at only 99% now.
Now why has US such low literacy rates? Well one obvious reason is that it is a capitalist country. The government does not see it as its responsibility to educate people, who must seek and pay for education themselves as part of an investment in themselves and their employability and careers. Essentially the slaves in US must work hard to increase their saleability and price at slave auction.
Meanwhile the rest of the world sees education as a collective cultural and social thing. Parents teach children to speak, read and write and follow the culture and customs of their community. My child does not speak "my" language, they speak the language my "community". There is no universal culture, when we teach children we teach them our culture. In the UK that may be how to succeed at a job interview, but in the Australian outback that might be how to find water. There is a huge difference between parents introducing kids to their community and just teaching them my culture. This expands into modern national organisation as a responsibility of one generation to equip the next with all the things they will need for happy and successful lives, and that becomes brokered through the government selected by parents to take charge of the affairs of the country. In recent centuries that sentiment has become collected together into a National Socialism* where parents seek not just to enrich their own children but ensure a welfare and success of the entire nation. It makes sense: there is little to gain from enriching your own child and then setting them out into a country that is inhabited by unskilled and unsuccessful people. Little point in being rich in a country where you can't even find a good plumber, or where you need massive security gates because the country is ruled by a mob of unsuccessful poor who have no means to enrich their lives but crime like you see in America.
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Section on the problem of National Socialism
* Now famously National Socialism runs into a problem captured perfectly by the German NAZIs. To protect your own culture and society at the national level it is necessary to prejudice against other cultures and societies. This perhaps sounds shocking, but its actually quite logical. Jews were hugely effected by this German National Socialism yet today they argue for exactly the same principle to protect Jewish ethnicity. Israel is a National Socialism and in fact supports all NAZI principles it just works to protect Jewish ethnicity rather than German ethnicity. Realising this is very important because it means that the problems of National Socialism have not gone away and we have not solved them.
Israel demonstrates that in fact we need National Socialism to protect ethnic groups, and in fact the Germans do need National Socialism. The defeat of the NAZIs was more political it seems to me. The British Empire simply took an opportunity to do what it did best destroy and take over another Empire.
Peak of German Empire: 2,440,222 sq miles
Peak of British Empire: 13,700,000 sq miles. It should have been easy for the British to defeat the German Empire but in fact it was a complete failure and Britain had to ask the US to win the war which sealed the fate for the British Empire. It was the biggest defeat in British history and lost us everything. To save face a story was concocted that we have a "special relationship" with our colonial rulers but it is paper thin. This I suspect is the real politics, and NAZIs were a distraction. But this does not progress the problem of National Socialism as epitomised by Israel.
Blog becoming long. The truth like with most things is probably in the middle. It is quite national for Old world countries to have a dominant common ethnicity, culture and history. For example in the UK we celebrate Christmas which is an amalgam of very ancient customs surrounding Mid-Winter (which includes Stone Henge) and customs brought in with missionaries and Romans around 2000 years ago. Our days of the week are named by Saxon colonisers. Being an island everything here has comes from overseas. But the pace of change and identities have evolved gradually and communities have had a chance to develop and evolve. It makes sense then for government even in the modern era to behave similarly with respect and sensitivity for the communities that exist in the country. The problem with Modern living, especially under US and Capitalist influence is that there is no respect for anything historical: it is all about profit. In the US where a genocide removed the Past people have this idea of "clean slates" and "radical change." But the rest of the world does not think like this. If you are a minority in a country then you obviously are a minority in a country this can never become your interests being a majority concern. The irony I always think with "Black" people or "Jewish" is that while complaining that their rights are not be protected, they are simply building up the wall of the need to protect rights. and if we have equality then the rights of the majority obviously outweigh the rights of a minority: that is simply called Democracy. All legislation is just to ensure that no minority is persecuted but there is a big difference between keeping Black slaves like in the US and telling a employee that no they can't have a day off to mark some religious observance. In the UK Christian missionaries moved their observance days to match the local customs: it seems so obvious for other religious groups in the UK to do the same. So National Socialism is quite logical and when you move to a country you should expect freedom from persecution, but you cannot expect to erased the customs of the majority to make an isolated niche for yourself. Its an idea that has been pushed into the "racist" bag, but there is some sense in saying to immigrants if you do not like the customs here then perhaps its the wrong country for you. I mean people may leave the UK because they don't like the weather, why not leave because you do not like the culture of animal welfare?
So there is no real problem with National Socialism. Jews make very clear that all ethnicities and communities have culture that need preserving. It makes sense therefore for communities to organise their governments around this culture. This can happen without harmful prejudice to other communities. And it does not stop majority communities absorbing ideas from minorities and overseas. But it does stop minorities expecting to ignore cultural majorities, and it does stop the government having to attend to every wish of minorities.
One of the great achievements of the UK is our successful integration of minorities and majorities. Returning to the top the US is a perfect example of a complete failure to do this. Despite supposed "liberalism" the US is peppered with isolated communities and ghettoes that do not integrate or take part either culturally or economically with the main government and culture. The US is very careful to portray the wealthy parts of LA or New York in their media and hide the outside world from the truth of widespread poverty and illiteracy in the US. Meanwhile in the UK we have a country designed around integration and inclusion where almost everyone really does have opportunity, and where all voices are heard. However modern attitudes are afraid of National Socialism and there is a risk of binning the established culture of the UK which is precious and has developed over 1000s of years and which is also irreplaceable. There is no where else in the world where you can get the English culture but England with all the wisdom and attitudes embedded in it. If British governments do not respond to the dominant cultures of Britain then they will actually commit a far greater crime than ignoring the interests of minorities.
But this also becomes an issue of Empires. Even if a National Socialist government emerges that democratically protects the interests and culture of the majority in Britain there is also the threat from the Imperial centre of America. Education has always been central to British culture. 2500 years ago in Britain the Druid class of our society would teach its children until the age of 33 before they were ready to take over the cultural, informational and literary responsibilities of the culture. But the US does not have this culture preferring the sales of "junk" for short term goals like profit. A National Socialist Britain would need to protect the people of this island from enforced cultural injection from powerful outside influence like America. I know for example that to protect regional music in France in the 1960s the Beetles were banned in France. Authoritarian that may sound but it meant that French people in the 1990s would still know the songs and identities of their regions that would be completely lost otherwise. If we turn nihilist and say the past is the past we should just let it all go and move on. Celebrate the Beetles and ignore old fashioned local songs. Then we need take that argument to the Jews and Israel and say why not just let go for being Jewish and join the future? We need be careful our ignoring the Past and role it plays in our understanding of the world and ourselves.
Thanks to the work of a few composers most notably Vaughan Williams some of the rich musical history of England was preserved in the early 20th Century. For example this piece contains local melodies he had collected:
