Games
Do you like games? I do. I remember playing Monopoly as a kid with my brother in the summer holidays. Hours we would spend as property tycoons down in the smoke, buying places we would never afford in real life. We used to bend the rules as well, borrowing money off the bank with a zero interest rate and no limit on the advance. I am sure my brother’s stash grew a bit when I went to the loo. He said I imagined it.
Games can cause adrenaline to rise and tempers to fray. Whilst we are immersed in them they take on a reality of their own and reactions to our opponents can imitate the feelings one gets by being exposed to stressors out there in the real world, such as someone pinching your parking space after you have been good and waited your turn.
Is this so-called life any different? I would say not. We just never know when to put the board away. The play becomes so real because we give it power. Life becomes a task, something to achieve. Games have one up on the real world: there is usually a clear goal and so we know what we want to achieve and what it will look like when we get there. The trouble with seeking is that we are searching for… we cannot really say what. It is something to do with contentment or happiness, or oneness with everything. Staying in the now is a good one, and perhaps shutting that noisy mind down for good would be a goal for seeking.
But we do not change the rules of Monopoly so much that it becomes pointless. Yes, we can conjure up one or two variations to speed things up a bit, but we would get bored with it if the challenges disappeared. We do want life to change, though. We want it to look a certain way and for people to behave in a way we feel is somehow more conducive to an egalitarian or utopian idea that we have read about in a book somewhere.
This is swimming against the current. All it will do is make you tired, because no matter how hard you swim upstream you will never reach home. You will end up grappling for the river bank to rest and have another go when you have got your strength back. What we cannot see is that we could stay on the bank in the deck chair and saunter back home when our legs feel like it, or let the current carry us along with it. Either way there does not seem to be much resistance: the legs move us from A to B and the stream will take us along with it for the ride. If we can sit back and enjoy the thrill of the current, we might explore places we would never have the guts to visit ourselves. The same caravan holiday every year might start to appear a bit bland if the stream chooses our destination for us.
I do not wish to overdo the metaphors, but seeing that life just happens regardless of what we think about it brings a strange feeling of relief as the knots of anxiety loosen and drop away.
The Lucid Dream
If you have not had a lucid dream or have had one and didn’t know what to call it, I’ll try and describe it here. A lucid dream is when there is a kind of knowing that you are dreaming. It is like having your foot in both camps—the waking world and the dream world. I remember a dream where I found myself under a sink fiddling with the plumbing. As I got up from the crouching position to find a wrench, I noticed that I was in a room with freshly plastered walls and no doorway. I looked around for a while thinking: ‘… what the f*** is going on here.’ It then dawned on me I was having a dream. For a while the sense of power is immense. It is like feeling invincible because you know that, whatever happens, not a damn thing is going to affect or hurt you in any way. Unfortunately, it seems you cannot stay in two worlds at the same time for long. After it gets rumbled it simply fades away to waking up, and leaves a residue and sense of wonderment and unease. It is rather puzzling for a while, but soon gets erased by the everyday task of making life work again—kids, work and shopping, that kind of thing.
If we remain open for a while, though, this experience can show us something. The dream world appeared real. There was an experience that was, at least at first, very mundane, worldly; until there is an inconsistency, everything seemed pretty normal. When the appearance, in this case the dream, is seen to be not what it appears to be, it is only a stone’s throw away to revealing the same about the so-called real world in which we apparently wake up. Look and see the appearances; they are flashing around in the same way they were in the dream. People are walking by and we can still fiddle with the plumbing under the sink if we want to. But we can see that appearances are showing up as experiencing, just like the dream.
Experiencing is still experiencing whether we can walk out of a kitchen doorway after changing the tap washer or ponder how we found ourselves in a place with four walls and no door. It is the same. Whatever shows up, it is all experiencing. Nobody is experiencing; there is just experiencing, but a belief in personhood prevents this kind of seeing, prevents this ‘pure’ experiencing. Thinking of ourselves as being someone will only allow for ignorance—nothing else. Ignorance seems to be a world of time and space, of becoming something in the future. But here is the thing: ignorance is no other than Wholeness appearing to be ignorant. There is only Wholeness so what else could it be?
Wholeness seems to love its games and plays with itself endlessly. You could say it is like a grand case of cosmic masturbation! But like playing with yourself, you cannot sustain it forever. You get worn out and need a break. You need to come back to reality and mingle a bit. Reality is noticing that appearances, whatever they are and making no distinction, are made out of knowing or being. It does not have to look a certain way or feel a certain way. Whatever shows up, there you are. Not you, Joe Bloggs the person living in space and time who will die one day and be gripped with remorse about deeds both done and not done at the point and after death. No, all there is, ever has been and ever will be is timeless, being/Wholeness, appearing as whatever is showing up. The drama appears as worlds, galaxies and everything. It appears as hopes, fears, fun and depression too.
The seeing of timeless presence seems to allow for relaxation and just a total stopping of future time. Life as a task loses its appeal and being with ‘what is’ satisfies whatever it is that sees. Anxiety is transformed into allowing things to happen without trying to shape or own them in some way. Depression turns into simple joys like watching a bird in flight or a dog jumping into the river for the umpteenth time. But we do not have to just revel in the so-called natural world: cups and saucers and bits of rubbish compete on a level playing field now, nothing is any better than anything else. If you have been to India and stayed in an ashram or hitchhiked your way to the current enlightened guy, you have not wasted your time. It is just that that was appropriate and what happened, happened. Your dream’s different from mine, but there is only one dreamer.
Repeat Performances
Spiritual experiences, where the old world transforms into something special and we feel special, have a habit of leaving you just when the going gets good. We might have started describing our experience hoping to save someone else the trouble of seeking and get them on our own wavelength instead. There might be a sense of knowing what enlightenment is now. We think we can taste what Ramana Maharshi tasted, walk in his shoes and see the world as golden light only. But Ramana’s shoes, like Gandhi’s, are just smelly old flip-flops when we stick them on. They do not really fit but we will cope with the pong and the pinching so as to keep up appearances and not let anyone down again.
I remember when I had great times as a child, on holiday or a nice day out: afterwards I would descend into an uncomfortable state of loss, and longed for the clock to run backwards. I felt like I had just had a spell out or prison for good behaviour. It was as if I had to return to keeping my head down now and do my time—until the next time. Unlike a prison term, though, this sentence has no release date, no parole and no pardon. You will never be free from this. You never see the prison guard either, but know he is there because you believe you can hear the jangle of his keys and the sound of his footsteps on that cold concrete corridor just outside your cell. You never notice the absence of the cell door or the constant flow of fresh air. You have convinced yourself of your own bad behaviour that has landed you i
n this slammer.
Wanting something to return just like before never works. Have you ever been on holiday somewhere and had a fantastic time: the weather was good; the food was perfect and the people you met could not have been more fun? When you get home you cannot stop thinking about it and put your relatives through unknown hell when the photos come out and the anecdotes have a life of their own, describing things one way one day and adding a bit the next. Book and find yourself there the following year and it is not the same. Yes, it seems much the same, but the emotional content will not agree with last year’s trip. It is a bit disappointing.
I suggest that looking for something in particular through spiritual endeavour ends up the same. Old experiences need constant maintenance. You have got to be on your guard for squatters in the form of new thoughts, ideas and the latest ramblings from the internet. Keeping these changes at bay is exhausting. You have become hyper-vigilant again. This time, instead of keeping that unpredictable world out you had experienced for years, you are now lumbered with a vision of enlightenment that is looking jaded and a bit murky. What started off as the experience to end all experiences has left you with doubt, depression and further dismay. Oh, no! Seeking’s returned, you say to yourself. You do not appear as vocal at the meetings anymore and you are reading those esoteric scriptures again. Bollocks, I thought that had finished. What the person cannot see is that novelty and change are the spice of life.
Wanting something to conform to our ideas is like trying to fix templates to them and then becoming frustrated when they do not fit. This is expectation and prediction at work—something the mind does incredibly well. It is this function of the mind that allows the body to protect itself from potential danger and lay down patterns for possible future occurrences. There is nothing wrong with this; it is very wise. Appealing to thought to recreate the emotional content associated with happiness and wellbeing, though, is not the same as protecting the body from danger, such as not crossing the road when a juggernaut’s approaching or ducking down when a cricket ball’s got your name on it. It is like using an adjustable spanner to open a tin of peas; it will not do it. It is the wrong tool for the job.
An appeal for repetition, then, is hopeless. This is not a problem. It only feels this way because the person wants something to hang onto, something to soothe and calm him or her, like an ancient security blanket that smells of Mummy and lots of cuddly things. Repetition is old news, stale and uninteresting. Now is where all the action is. Present being is more alive than any thrills and spills that require language and nuance to recreate and transmit. This is why leaving a retreat or meetings in togetherness fail to deliver when you get back to work on Monday or see the Missis again. They are too old news, too stale and tasteless. Chuck ‘em away like mouldy old bread. If you persist on eating such crap it will only poison you.
The Self
The self is one of those terms we slip into our everyday conversations and use it in many, many ways. We say, ‘I have hurt myself.’ Or, ‘I feel self-conscious.’ We can talk of self-loathing or self-knowledge. Whilst studying for my degree, I found that the self was defined in different ways by different scholars working within different paradigms (underlying assumptions about what the world consists of and how it holds together). Their starting points were different and the kind of animal they were describing differed too. Some concentrated on cognition or making sense of the world through interpretation and stored knowledge. Others concentrated on actual lived experience for the individual—a phenomenological approach. The psychodynamic line of enquiry focused upon unconscious processes and early childhood emotional development. Another emphasised the social construction of the self, arguing that it emerges from interaction in the world, through language usage and cultural norms.
You can see it is a term that will not be defined once and for all, and yet it is worth examining more closely, just for the sake of breaking down certainty once more and questioning the very fabric of the world we adopt on our arrival and during our stay on the planet. There are so many definitions and perspectives but, for the purposes of The World Is My Mirror, we shall be looking at the psychodynamic approach.
You are probably familiar with Sigmund Freud and his idea that the unconscious, rather than being just a storehouse for old experiences and memories, was dynamic and active, influencing current behaviour and directing our thoughts and providing the emotions. Free will was replaced by dark forces that needed to be controlled by psychic structures. It was the everyday strategies we use to keep this equilibrium that were the origin of all behaviour. He argued that we were largely unaware of this battle within: only the quirky behaviour resulting from it that kept turning up brought it to notice.
Freud was quite rigid with his theory and wasn’t keen on others developing his original thesis too far. He was interested in tension reduction and the lengths to which we go in trying to maintain equilibrium or pleasure. However, dissenters there were, and other practitioners working within this paradigm noticed that the mind seems to be full of mental characters that populate the internal world and play out their parts in this private space rather than actual people in the here and now. It was argued that our first relationship patterns set up basic templates or caricatures of other people.
As adults we simply fit people into these templates, not consciously of course, but automatically. For example, if we had a strict, punitive father who criticised us, we spend most of our time as adults looking for approval and comfort. We might see all authority figures from our teachers to our bank manager in the same way and return to a time when we felt vulnerable and scared. The point is the world we think we live in is constructed from thought. We do not see anything as it is actually appearing; we are always living in a drama with characters that bear only a slight resemblance to their actual identity. Of course, the people you come into contact with are also doing this, so we end up living out the drama rather than actual lived experience. It seems dramas are interacting with other dramas and distorting everything and everyone. What a mess!
This is referred to as ‘living in a closed loop’ with repeating patterns, like a mouse on an exercise wheel. This could account for the feelings I had around other people. I never actually saw them; I was slotting them into character, dressing them up in fantasy and mayhem and running the story that was familiar to me rather than simply being and enjoying contact.
This, for me, is why the world appeared stunning on that November day outside the supermarket. I hadn’t really seen people and objects before; I was running on old pseudo-knowledge; fitting people and objects into what I thought I knew about the world. This Richard Bates manifestation thought he knew what the world was: he didn’t.
When the personal entity is rumbled and Wholeness sees, the world is always refreshing itself in timelessness. Nothing appears the same, ever. Only a cock and bull story created by old templates and memories creates the illusion of permanence and stability. When you walk your dog past your neighbour’s house and you stop to speak to him, you have never seen each other in this way before. Not one handshake or smile is repeated. There is just the present configuration of Wholeness or no-thingness. This is a completely different way of being. This is freeing. I suspect our early years were like this until life got serious. However, as I have said already, to look with eyes of a child and the wisdom of an adult is breath-taking.
The Old and the New
We count the days, months and years and mark off our calendars. History programmes show us ancient lands and monuments and describe a time quite different from our own. We are exposed to older cultures and shown the progressive stages man has superseded to reach his current incarnation.
If you found yourself in Egypt you might be marveling at the pyramids of Giza. Your tour guide is rambling on about who built them and how old they are. You look at your watch to see how much longer to lunch time; you have not eaten since 7 a.m. and you are gagging for an Egyptian beer. You look at your watch, t
he wrist it is sitting on and the fat bloke on the camel who raises an inward smile. The mind is convincing us that there are separate objects appearing all with varying ages and histories. The separate person is convinced that there was a past when all this was built, a time before this one. It is not true; it is a story appearing at the same time everything else is. The hunger, the thirst, the voice of the guide, the wristwatch complete with wrist and the magnificent structures are all the present appearance of everything. Nothing is any older than anything else. They all appear as this one whole dream about people, places, structures and other times. You can wake up whenever you like or snooze a few more decades and get engrossed in the story. Noticing this is stunning. There are no pyramids four thousand years old. Just like that vintage sports car you won in last night’s dream game, it is all just dreaming consciousness, spinning its yarns, having fun with itself.
It is so hypnotic, this life we think we have, so mesmerising. I do not blame anyone scoffing at this and branding me unbalanced. This sounds crazy to the mind; it will not go here. Have you ever been to the vets and seen an owner dragging their dog into the surgery once it sees the white coat of the veterinary surgeon? The claws are digging into the floor and the owner looks like he is training for the World’s Strongest Man competition. Well, just like Rex, the mind does not want to go there. It will resist all the way. Who can blame it? Just like the dog, it is not sure it is going to see the light of day again. However, unlike the dog, the poor old ego will not see the world again; it will become the world instead and in the process vanish like the smoke from a spent match.
The World is My Mirror Page 5