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What you are

To know what you are
You must forget everything
and look for yourself

And there’s nothing to see
but seeing itself

Because nothing you see
is you
Nothing you know
Nothing you feel
Nothing you think

None of it is you.

You are the seeing
the perceiving
that happens before
“choice”
Before thought

You are.

You are…

You are life itself.

Moved by that which ignites stars and explodes volcanos.

Driven like the stormy ocean and placid like a cloudless winter sky.

You are nothing

You are everything

You are miraculously ordinary.

Who and What?

There is a difference between who you are and what you see.

This is common knowledge.

I see a bird and I know intrinsically that I am NOT that bird. Nothing complicated about it.

Same with thoughts – It should be abundantly clear to anyone who has ever noticed a thought in their mind that they are not their thought. For example, I have the thought of a perfect circle. Do I mistake myself for that thought? Is it possible that the idea of a circle is me? No, again, like the bird, we are clear in the distinction between our thoughts and our selves.

It works with feelings too. Only there things have a tendency to get more complicated.

In the moment most of us are apt to say “I’m happy” or “I’m angry”. Rather than “I see that there are feelings of happiness” or “I feel that there is anger”. Anger is seen like the bird.

Well, maybe this knowledge isn’t so common after all.

Somehow when it comes to feelings and to a lesser degree any event that we call “interior” (thoughts, sensations, etc), we seem to lose the ability to differentiate between what is seen or thought or felt and who we actually are!

What is a goal?

Today I was listening to someone speak about setting goals. He was going on and on about how important it is to have goals to help us achieve the things we want in life.This got me thinking about the past, the present and the future.

What is the past? The past is a memory. Memories reside where? In our heads. The past is a collection of memories that reside in our heads.

What is the present? The present is Now. Always Now. It’s always the Present. It’s never NOT the present.

What is the future? The future is an imagination, a fantasy of what’s to come. As such, the future too, is in our heads.

Fantasy: An imagined event or sequence of mental images, such as a daydream, usually fulfilling a wish or psychological need.

Viewed this way, what are goals?

Goals are little fantasies about the future.

So, by this reckoning, the speaker was advocating the creation of mini-fantasies as a means to help us achieve the things we want in life.

Now, I’ve set goals. I sometimes write them down. It has sometimes seemed that goals have helped to direct me. I’m not knocking them.

But once you see them for what they are - little fantasies - the whole routine of “setting goals to help you get what you want” seems kind of goofy.

What’s it all about

He’s where I’ll be posting observations of the curious animal we call Human Beings.

Our tendency to say one thing and do another, our seeming inability to find satisfaction and happyness and our almost fanatical tendency to decree that all should live as we do is a source of deep fascination for me.

We are as crazy as can be yet we think we’re rational, sane and organized!

We are strange creatures, plain and simple.

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