The Illusion of Identity

I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago that was basically about all the various illusions of "self" with which we identify, and by which the human ego maintains its separative existence.  The sense of separation, as we see in our own country, in the world at large, and perhaps in our own lives, engenders nothing but competition, conflict, and strife instead of cooperation.

This is a meditation upon a poetic turn of phrase which Meher Baba dictated regarding the conundrum of identity.  The prayer is: "I am not the body.  I am not the mind.  I am not this.  I am not that.  I am nothing but a living lie of the truth that is me.  And unless the lie is dead, the truth cannot be."

The video was created by Jerry Watson.

 

DARSHAN OR PRESENCE

Meher Baba

 
The physical presence of Masters does not yield its significance except in the context of the inner planes. The ancient Rishis attached great importance to having the Darshan of saints and Masters, the source of the flow of love and light which makes an irresistible appeal to the inner being of the aspirant even when he receives no verbal instruction.

The effect of Darshan is dependent upon the receptivity of the aspirant, whose reaction is determined by his own sanskaras and past connections. Often the aspirant is satisfied with the Darshan of the Master and has no desire for anything else from him. To derive bliss from the mere Darshan of the Master is a great thing because it indicates that the aspirant has desirelessness and love, the two essentials of spiritual life.

Having had the Darshan of the Beloved, the aspirant naturally desires nothing except to have more and more Darshan or company of the Master as possible, which results in drawing the aspirant closer to the Master on the inner plane of life.

 

Playing Banjo For a Wild Fox

Since music is at the heart of everything, the fox can hear the magic too.

 

Italian Alps Again With Martijn Doolaard

 He's back and hard at it after a 6-8 week respite.  Strangely enough, the snow has melted off and it's unseasonably warm, in the 40s, Farenheit.  Building a cabin within his cabin in order to stay warm.  Guess he's planning on staying the winter here.

During the intro, you hear his neighbor Johannes mention that there are antelope and fox on the mountain, with a pack of wolves on another peak.  I was surprised to hear that.  The wolves must have "endangered species" protection in order to make a comeback.  

He even works at night.  He's indefatigable. I think it just means he enjoys what he's doing.  As I said before, he's committed to the process and is not rushing it.  Measure twice, cut once.

The Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington

I grew up about a mile from a swath of channeled scablands caused by massive Ice Age floods from 15,000 years ago.  8 miles south of Rock Lake, with bluffs of massive basalt lava flows several million years old, scoured by the floods.  The lake is very deep with only a small creek entering into it and a small river (the Palouse, which eventually flows into the Snake, which flows into the Columbia) exiting to the southwest.  

My mother, however, used to play as a girl on the chalk flats just south of this lake and claimed that she could hear water running under the ground, and that if she stomped her foot hard enough in places, there was an echo, so presumably an underground river feeds and drains this lake.  I'm sure that underground river was caused by the floods so many thousands of years ago.

I miss this landscape.  It looks barren and desolate to the untrained eye, but it really is a series of formations that bear witness to the unequalled primal power of the earth.  It makes a deep and lifelong impression upon one.  When I'm in this area, my whole spirit unfolds and spreads out over the land for miles.   

Short But Sweet

Selene Munoz doing a short flamenco on a rooftop in Copenhagen.  This seems to be rooted in something deep and magical, connected to the animal earth. 

A Credo of Sorts

The "truth" about you is not what you say, think, or feel.  It's not the impression or mask that you've successfully sold to other people.  It's not your house, your car, your job, your clothes, your hair, your partner.  It's not the shape of your body.  It's not how sexually alluring you are, how many people you've bedded, how easily you can hook others with your sexual energy.  It's not your bank account.  It's not your family heritage.  It isn't your nationality, your ethnicity, your religion, your sexual or political orientation.  What's really confusing is that the "truth" about you is usually not even what you think of yourself.  There is an intrinsic truth about who you really are that is absolutely independent of all these other factors.

Everybody's got a different read on this.  People identify with this, that, or the other.  Grand philosophies tell you that you are your immortal soul.  Perhaps, but I've never seen it, so it doesn't help us if we're trying to define ourselves.  Besides, we're always in flux, right?  So how can we make a defining call on who we really are?

Life can be a confusing hall of smoke and mirrors, especially in this day and age when image is everything and an entire industry of social media exists so that we can choose to manipulate our image to conform to our own will.

It helps, perhaps, if we take a Buddhist tack.  I'm not a Buddhist, by the way.  Its ultimate goal of self-negation just doesn't do it for me.  But it is helpful in deconstructing false images of who we might be.  It's good medicine for that.

Each of us is living a story.  Maybe you're heavily invested in the story of your life.  Maybe you want to be the hero of your story, or maybe you want to be your own anti-hero.  If you buy into the "story" of your life, you've been hoodwinked by the goddess Maya, or "illusion."  Which means you're an actor in the play of life who's over-identified with their own assigned role.

The Buddhists often meditate upon their own death, and presumably thereby live their lives differently according to the insight which they've glimpsed in that meditation.

My own working definition of the moment, in the moment, is that you are your character.  Not who you pretend to be, but who you really are if all your many secrets were known to the world.  Because life knows all your secrets.  What has happened to you, what you've done, everything you've ever thought, felt, or said, any feathery impression which has registered in your interior or exterior world, is etched into your being.  It stands as it really is.  You are the living sum of all those moments, and you are that this very second.  That is your "truth."  The reality of who you really are in this moment.  Your true character, as it has been molded by all your experience of life.

You can try to avoid this truth.  Most people do.  They try to negate, repress, or otherwise ignore the truth of who they really are.  The trouble is, all those false attempts don't really make it so.  You are who you really are, this very moment, and nothing you can do will change that.  Your character is the irrefutable fact of your life.  And you know what?  People can sense that about you, whether they're consciously aware of it or not.  You don't ever really fool anyone but yourself.

That's what you take with you when you die.  Not your clothes, your car, your bank account, not even the people who love you.  All that you take with you when you die is your character -- who you really are the moment you die --- that is all you take with you when you go.

In some religions, you're judged by that.  In truth, you are judged by life itself, for what you've done, thought, said, felt, how you made other people feel, how you effected them.  There's really no tribunal in the sky.  Heaven and hell are immaterial.  Many spiritual philosophies say you carry who you are forward and that fashions your future.  In the end, you are only judged by the character you have fashioned for yourself by your own actions and choices.  And, yes, life is unfair and you had no control over what happened to you.  But you always have control over your response to what happens to you.  And your response creates the reality of your character.

Be that as it may, I say that the character you have earned by the way you've lived, how you've chosen to live, whether honestly, or dishonestly, or probably some muddy version of the both -- that's who you are.  You define yourself not by what you achieve or who you fool.  You define yourself by who you really are, and the only thing you've really earned in this life is this -- your own character.

Is that not fair?  And you can change your character, if you want.  All it takes is honest intent, earnest effort, and integrity of purpose.  And time and diligence.  Everyone can change.  The worst person on earth can become the character model for all mankind, if they so choose.  But do it for real.  Life is not about what you can fake.  It's about who you really are.  If you think otherwise, well -- if you're too lazy to do the real work or you'd rather take the supposed "easy way out" -- then you're someone I will choose to avoid.  Why waste time on fools?

I'm not saying you should try to be perfect.  I'm not.  Just be real.  Others can take it or leave it but at least you can live with yourself.  And that's the bottom line, at the end of the day.  It is for me, anyway.