wanting more enlightenment
is the ego's way of avoiding enlightenment
whereas, thinking one has no ego and is already enlightened
should make one wonder who is having such thoughts?!
if it doesn't, more meditation is in order

THAT'S WONDERFUL - NOW LET IT GO
"I had one of those visions which colors forever the way you hold certain attitudes and ideas. And the vision was that I, being an academic, have academic visions and I was writing on this huge blackboard a very complicated and very sophisticated analysis of reality as I understood it with the help of psychedelics. And God came in and looked at this and said that it was just wonderful and then erased it all. And I said with a little bit of concern, why have you erased it? And he said, "Well, that was just wonderful, I just loved that, and I certainly hope you'll do others." And I realized that what I was being told is that the chances of you in this body in this lifetime with these languages in this civilization really understanding reality are zero - but it is extraordinarily entertaining and kind of nourishing. This is a good thing, to invent these theoretical castles in the air.

And the transformation for me was that I from that point on was not committed to my deepest core beliefs because I began to see that my deepest core beliefs were among the beliefs that I was changing and that, if I looked back a few years, there was a real shift in the beliefs that I now felt were core. So, since I was letting go of some core beliefs every few years, I had no reason to assume that the core beliefs I had now were going to last any longer.

And so there was a certain relief, a kind of letting go of pretentiousness and so that's been partly I think my career of not being too attached to any given ideological stance was really clarified in that particular session, which is different from the experience that all systems are valuable that lead towards this fundamental experience. It's a different way of looking at it. This was more looking at my own personal take on things was always going to be personal, subjective, limited, and inaccurate."  -James Fadiman

KNOWING WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT

A prideful child returned from a Natural History Museum and was fond of relating to anyone who would listen how he had experienced Nature and the Earth and he knew now what it was all about. One evening he was visited by the spirit of Gaia who held up one of the child's tiny, plastic dinosaur toys and communicated to him, "What you know about Nature and the Earth would fit into the mouth of this toy with space left over for every meal you and everyone you'll ever know will ever eat!"

A prideful astronaut returned from orbiting the Earth and was fond of relating to anyone who would listen how he had experienced outer space and he knew now what it was all about. One evening he was visited by a small, gray alien who held up a single grain of sand and communicated telepathically to the astronaut, "What you know about outer space would rest on one trillionth of a billionth of the surface area of this grain of sand!"

A prideful psychonaut returned from a sacred plant medicine experience and was fond of relating to anyone who would listen how he had experienced the outer realms of spirit and being and he knew now what is was all about. One evening he was visited by a floating light being who manifested a single black void the size of a pinhead and communicated to the psychonaut, "What you know about the realms of spirit and being would pass through this void and leave a space the size of the multiverse as a gap!"

OUR FRONT - OUR BACK
"When you say to somebody else, 'I love you," it's always rather disconcerting to the person you say that to if you implied you love them with a pure, disinterested, and holy love. They automatically suspect it as being a little bit phony. But if you say, "I love you so much I could eat you," that's an expression, it's a way of saying to a person, "You attract me so much that I can't help it - I'm absolutely bowled over by you - I'm gone!" And people like that. Then they feel they're really being loved, that it's absolutely genuine.

But now, "I love you so much I could eat you." Now, what the devil do I want? I certainly don't want to eat the girl in the sense of literally devouring her because then she'd disappear. But I love myself. And what is me? In what way do I know me?

But it suddenly occurs to me that I know 'me' only in terms of 'you' and the main task of the psychotherapist is to do what's called, 'to integrate the evil,' to as it were put the devil in us in its proper function because you see it's always the devil, the unacknowledged one, the outcast, the scapegoat, the bastard, the bad guy, the black sheep of the family, it's always from that point that generation comes. In other words, in the same way as in the drama, to have the play it's necessary to introduce a villain, it's necessary to introduce a certain element of trouble. So, in the whole scheme of life, there has to be the shadow because without the shadow there can't be the substance.

So, this is why there's a very strange association between crime, and all naughty things and holiness. Holiness is way beyond being good. Good people aren't necessarily holy people. A holy person is one who is whole, who as if were, reconciled his opposites. And so there's always something slightly scary about holy people and other people react to them in very strange ways. They can't make up their minds whether they're saints or devils. And so holy people have throughout history always created a great deal of trouble, along with their creative results. Take Jesus, for example. The trouble that Jesus created is absolutely incalculable. Think of the crusades, the inquisitions, heaven only knows what's gone on in the name of Jesus. Very remarkable.

Freud is a big troublemaker. Jung had a tremendous humor and he knew that nobody can be completely honest. That you'll try and you'll have a great deal of success in exploring your motivations and your dark, unconscious depths but there'll be a certain point at which you will say, "Well, I've had enough of that...!" Do you see how, in a strange way, there's a certain sanity in that?

When a person indulges in a certain kind of duplicity, in deception -- you all laughed when I said that, there's something humorous about it, and this humor, it's a very funny thing. Basically, humor is an attitude of laughter about oneself. There is malicious humor which is laughing at other people, but real deep humor is laughter at oneself. Now, why fundamentally do you laugh about yourself? What makes you laugh about yourself? Isn't it because you know that there's a big difference between what goes on the outside and what goes on the inside?

Now, I passed you around a lot of embroidery to look at before we started. And I'm perfectly sure that you got the point that there's a big difference between the front and the back. In some forms of embroidery, the back is very different from the front because people take shortcuts. In the front everything is orderly and it's supposed to be kind of messy on the backside. See, which side will you wear? You've got to be sure you get the front on the front and the back in the back - and the back has all the little tricks in it, all the little shortcuts, all the lowdown that people don't acknowledge, you see.

And it's exactly the same with the way we live. You know, like sweeping the dust under the carpet in a hurry just before the guests come. I mean, we do ever so many things just like that, and if you don't do it, if you don't think you do it, then you think really, my embroidery is the same on both sides. You see? Well, you're deceiving yourself because what you're doing is you're taking the shortcuts in another dimension which you're keeping out of consciousness.

Everybody takes the shortcuts, everybody plays tricks, everybody has in himself an element of duplicity, deception. Because, you see, from this point of view which I'm discussing, where the web is the trap, to be is to deceive. Think of camouflage. The chameleon who changes its color. Think of the butterfly pretending it has eyes...now, in the same way I've often said life is a drama and a drama is a deception, a big act.

When you peel an onion and you don't really understand the nature of an onion, you might look for the pit in the center, like any ordinary fruit has, but the onion doesn't have a center, it's all skins, so when you get right down there's nothing but a bunch of skins. And you say, well, that was kind of disappointing. But rather in the same way, you see, you find when you explore yourself in your motivations and you go through and through and you try to find that thing which is really genuine. So you explore the onion and you go in and in and in and you find, well, it's all a deception.

Now then the question arises, who's deceiving who, who's fooling who? I'm fooling me?! What is 'fooling'? Fooling is playing like you're there when you not. You know, getting somebody else to answer your name in the roll call. So, this is the metaphysical basis of it. This is what the Hindus mean by 'Maya' the 'world of illusion.' The world is playing it's there when it isn't. And it's a trap and it sucks you in and you can't get out of it. And it's a thorough big trap too.

But always when you get an idea like this, or a feeling like this, follow it to its extreme. Don't back out from it. If you find you're selfish, go to the extreme of what selfishness means. Confusion largely results from not following feelings or ideas to their death. You know, people think they want to be immortal, they'd like to live forever. Do you really want to do that? Think about it, really go into it, what it would be like. People say they want this, that, and the other...it's always a good idea to think it right through, what it would involve to be in that situation, to have those desires fulfilled. Also when you form a relationship to another person, think it through too...always turn the embroidery around and look at the underside but don't get caught doing it. That's something one does on the side, in secret, because otherwise you play the game that everything is as it's supposed to be on the front. But that makes you humorous, and that makes you human."
   -Alan Watts

the deep part of us

gains outer sight 

only in our light,

and gains inner sight 

only in our darkness.

both light and darkness 

reveal and enable sight.

both are consciousness.

WHENEVER I GO DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE,

THIS IS HOW I LIKE IT TO LOOK.

SOMETIMES IT DOES, SOMETIMES NOT,

EITHER WAY I GET PRETTY SHOOK.

I CAN NEVER BE SURE

IF THERE'S A BOTTOM OR NOT.

MOSTLY I GET THE FULL TOUR,

YOU KNOW, THE ONE I AUGHT.

SOME SAY THERE'S NO WAY BACK UP

ONCE YOU'VE TAKEN THE RIDE.

I USE TO SAY NO TO THAT BUT NOW I SAY YUP.

THAT'S WHY I'M NOT HERE - BUT I TAKE IT IN STRIDE.

the truth is not afraid of questions

“The secret of happiness 
 is to never make it dependent 
 on that which can be taken away.” 
                                        --Yasmin Mogahed

To gain mastery over reality
is to create a mythology
worth living for.