Boiling to the Surface

There is a lot of energy that constantly boils to the surface of our lives in the physical world. Sometimes it is violent and sometimes it is passionate. Other times it can be intensely stifling or boring. But those are all strong energies to be dealt with.

We turn against ourselves when we overflow with boiling energy. Every new one is a threat demanding an immediate and violent reaction from us. Who can argue that this is good for us? We can obviously see that it's when we are the most out of control that we tend to make the most potentially damaging decisions. And yet there is a freedom there of, for once, not having to be “reasonable’ or “sensible” or having to take total responsibility for our actions. In a sense, it is a way out for us so that we can act without having to really think about what we are doing.

We carve our niche in the world and when we get too stressed out, we get pushed too far and we realize that our niche is being threatened. Then we get angry and lash out and we’re less likely to take control or responsibility.

But self-control and free will are both meaningless in an absolute sense and we can’t deal with that end of the issue either. So being out of control is a way for us to not have to acknowledge our powerlessness or our lack of free will. So in a sense it is a safety valve that allows us to not have to confront reality too harshly, but to stay within the boundaries of our comfort zone. But the price we have to pay is that in those moments where things boil over and we are forced to loose control rather than facing ourselves, the consequences of our actions can be pretty heavy and they can add up.

Clearly we are being manipulated, all the time, by advertising, our bosses, the world, etc. We are never free agents in a free world, and least free of all is our own mind. This is sort of the wild west of mind freedom, our own brain and how it functions gives us no room to look too deeply, for if we do we’re sure to see a lot of stuff we can’t face. Given that choice it is easier to deal violently with the world and in a superficial manner with it.

Violence is off-putting and it demands that we keep the world away more at a philosophical level than anything else. It’s a reaction to the stress of constant manipulation attempts towards you by others. If your ego isn’t framed in the right way, every attack by manipulating forces can seem overwhelmingly threatening. The mind that has to fight with the world in this way can never really be at peace at all. It has to either pretend that it is ignoring everything that is happening while subconsciously dealing with the stress, or it has to constantly fight back against all input, which is even more stressful.

The world is out to kill you because it does not see you. It thinks that because it can’t see you or feel you that you don’t exist. Then if it happens to hurt or kill you, the nature of the violent and unpredictable world is presented as a sort of absence of a need to really respond to that violence and what it has done to you.

We say that violence cannot be prevented, but in truth it is more an issue of each person being part of a culture that, just like its individuals, does not want to see the truth too clearly. And so violence is tolerated and dealt with violently.

The violence of justice, of “cleaning up” violent people is presented to the world as the necessary evil created by a violent world. But individual violence is never dealt with societally except in a punitive manner because the world wants to protect itself from excessive self-examination that leads to realization of the truth. So violence against violence is a smokescreen that keeps violence in and excessive self-awareness out.

The idea of justice itself is a means of never looking at the world. “Justice,” as it is currently defined by our society, is the issue of how to hurt and confine someone in such a way that they are hurt as badly as the person that they injured. In doing this we often hurt wives and children of those involved in crime. Although we are lashing out and harming them as well as the offender, we don’t care about them because them because although our own efforts to punish are as criminal against these innocent people (or more so) than the original crime itself was, we do not responsible because we feel entitled to payback on behalf of society. And so the cycle continues.

If individuals who commit crimes are raped in prison, their rape is seen as inconsequential because they are "criminals." The broad stroke of criminality is used to dehumanize the person being punished and the issue of whether or not they deserve to be raped is never addressed.

The alternative to this kind of attack-defense against crime is shown as being anarchy. Obviously no one would choose anarchy so we go back to square one again. And so it goes, but the truth is a little more difficult to face. Being in a society does not in any real way relieve us of the responsibility and burden we carry within ourselves to be at peace with ourselves. That is to say that if we commit crimes in the name of justice, for the good of society, we cannot ignore forever our own part in these crimes.

The crimes remain crimes whether we justify them to ourselves or not, or whether society punishes, rewards or ignores them. Being part of a social program of delivering justice does not relieve us our own mind having to deal with our being part of this. And so, we ask ourselves for a way out, but we are hemmed in on the one hand by our guilty need to serve society by doing what we deem necessary and on the other hand being put off by what we have to do and having trouble living with it.

The criminal and law enforcement worlds are places where the stuff that never gets looked at or resolved by society often is swept under the rug. Often times our justice system is asked to make all or nothing sweeping rulings and laws based on gray-area conflicts that end up leaving no real good being done for society. But keeping these issues out of sight and mind is often seen as the ultimate necessity.

So we are always looking for a third option, a way out, but we don’t seem to find it. Between the world and ourselves we seem to have to choose between peaceful irresponsible cop-out and violent fulfillment of our social responsibility. Either way, we feel guilt for our choice and no real peace within ourselves is possible.

The reason we cannot find the third door is because we ourselves are that door. We created our lives and we see what we want to see. The world is violent because we begin by attacking ourselves. When we question ourselves, our fundamental right to exist, our “worth” or “value,” we essentially open the door to endless attacks against both ourselves and others until we have the wherewithal to close it. Then it is just a matter of looking back and seeing that we constantly rebuilt the violence of the world with each passing moment that we lived in the world.

Obviously, the world seems to be happening too us, not from us (as much,) so it is difficult to be able to see how we are creating the violence of the world. The answer is that the violence we see in ourselves is reflected in our consciousness as an "external world." Seeing is internal but so too is our "external" experience.
Externality is an attack against our own self. As long as there is any form of external world, then we are under attack. Even if we were in Heaven and it was external to us, the threat of attack would always loom over us because what is not within us is potentially against us. How can we guarantee our own safety in a world we are subject to laws, rules and beings that we cannot control?

The external nature of the world is a metaphor for how we are attacking ourselves. When we cease attacking ourselves, even for just a short while, the world will disappear from around us and we will see a completely different kind of world that is both internal, peaceful, loving and entirely responsive to our desires. We will no longer see violence because there is no part of our mind that is engaged in attack.

So, the mirror-like nature of the world as a reflector of our internal states will be completely revealed and the externality mirror shattered only when we see a world, for the first time in our living memory, that reflects our complete absence of attack against ourselves. But how do we accomplish this state?

We cannot draw on any model or idea that falls within the realm of what is familiar to us in order to get to this place. We first have to acknowledge, at least in our mind, that theoretically and perhaps practically such a state of mind is possible. We don’t know exactly how it would look to us or what it would feel like to be in it, but we can at least imagine it is possible. This is step one.

Step two is to take the idea and give it flesh. We breathe life into it by acknowledging that all ideas can be seen and experienced, even ideas that are not real such as physicality. We internally wish to see, with as much intensity as we can muster, this state of no attack against the self and the world that it will reflect back to us. This is the second step.

Thirdly and finally we make ourselves ready to receive such a state of being. We meditate on it, imagining that we are receiving it fully and feeling relief and gladness that we have done so. We play this act out in our minds over and over again, each time growing in our ability to receive what we are asking for while intensifying our desire to see it. Then it grows closer to us. And, we overcome our fear of losing this world when we see it finally.

When the time comes that we see this new world, we are both ready and willing to see and we don’t mind leaving behind the old world. Our willingness is the only necessary element to our success. Now we only have to take these steps ourselves rather than just reading about them. The rest will be history.