Death of the Ego

When we feel life's perfection, we feel that glory of the moment, and we realize that all is working out just as it should.  However it is the ego that brings us back from the timeless awareness of life's miracle. The ego has us questioning and judging. The ego does this because it feels threatened. Threatening because judgment, of life, of oneself, and of others becomes rendered irrelevant.

Many of us can only hold that "in the moment glory" for only short amounts of awareness.  In the moment of realizing life's perfection the ego witnesses that it's judgments are irrelevant so it acts to reconcile its annihilation.  The ego fears losing its identity so it utilizes the unconscious mind to fear oneself into doubting perfection.  Because it is the realization of perfection that abolishes the ego.  It is death in a sense, however only in the ego's death are we liberated from the illusory separation from spirit.

The ego can rest assured though.  As there is no such thing as complete annihilation, for it is spirit that created creation, of which ego is a by-product.  The knowing that we are alive after the ego's death is what brings absolute peace.  Because in the ego's death we know, without question, that we are a part of something larger then the perceived self.

The Purpose of Life

Purpose is a moment to moment experience. The word purpose is synonymous with motive, cause, reason, and intention.  Our life's purpose has everything to do with how we choose to live. Yet like life, our purpose is ever changing.

When we seek to understand our purpose we seek to understand our reason for being alive 

Maybe our life's purpose is to be a father, a mother, the mailman, a teacher, an entrepreneur, or a seeker of knowledge.  Our life's purpose can be expressed in infinite ways and it is multi-faceted by its nature.  Our life's purpose is the foundation of our intention...and this is our declaration to the world.  So we must honor what we do, think, and say, because these mediums are the gateways to the experiential relationship we have with ourselves and others.  But I wonder, is there something about the "purpose of life" that transcends our individual pursuits?

Is there a purpose to life that is all encompassing... a universal intention that is beyond us?

I believe that if we ask ourselves this question we peer deeply into the "fabric" that holds life together. I feel that asking ourselves this question is imperative to breaking free from our egoic isolation.  Pondering beyond ourselves, I believe, will actually bring us deeply in touch with who we are... and who we are be becoming on a planetary scale.

What is it that we are becoming anyway?

I have no idea!  I could propose a few ideas, but they would fall short because my words and ideas can never touch the ultimate truth; the ultimate experience of what life is.

There is a philosophy that proposes that the ultimate purpose of life can only be understood from the perspective of the collective.  It is the proposition that the sum total of all of our intentions, including the intentions of seemingly unconscious entities (the Earth, the stars, and everything in between) determines what life, as a whole, is creating.  This movement of creation then is the ultimate purpose of life.  It is "on purpose," and meaningful beyond comprehension.  It is a view that holds that nothing is "random" and that everything is born out of intelligence.  If it a purpose beyond definition, but a purpose of the upmost significance.

Ultimate purpose, what is that?

The ultimate purpose is largely out of our control.  It is cosmic in its scale.  And although the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension that does not mean that we cannot sense it.  Our intuitive sense is what brings us into emotional communication with the ultimate purpose of life... and if we listen to this calling within we will see that our life becomes meaningful to a greater degree.  

When I hone in on this sense I feel that I am in communication with the universe, with God, or the movement of creation (call it what you will).  It is comforting to me because it makes me feel connected to something greater than myself and it frees me from the imprisonment of my egoic isolation.  It is a sense that makes me remember that I am never alone - even when my mind tricks me into believing I am or that my life is of no consequence or meaning.

The root of our forgetfulness and disconnection from Ultimate Purpose

It seems that we are so overly concerned with self image that we forget to see life beyond the self (or life beyond humanity).  I fear it is our narcissistic tendencies that blind us from seeing the interconnectivity of life's purpose.  I feel that narcissism and our obsession with status, image, control, and power, is at the root of all social dysfunction.

Could it be that our narcissism is a coping mechanism?  Is narcissism our attempt to block ourselves from the loneliness and or guilt associated to being blind to our inherent unity and how this perceived separation has caused all the destruction and division we see in our world today.  We deny our ability to communicate with the universe, with god, and the movement of creation.  Thus, I feel a deep existential lack is born because we deeply believe in our separation.  Our differences are real, but our similarities are much more profoundly similar.

Becoming conscious of how our disconnection has led to so much destruction can be saddening.  It may make us feel like our individuals life's purpose is vain, meaningless, and unimportant.  However, even that in it self is self destructive, because our individual life is part of the cosmic whole.  Our lives, our passions, and our individual missions are very important!  Yet, when we align our life's passion and purpose with a deep sense of connection to the world, with others, the Earth, and the cosmos, we will actually feel deeply rooted to a purpose greater than our own.

No one person is to blame for for the human condition as it is.  It is a way of life that we have become conditioned to live.  It has been going on for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, but now in the dawn of a forced new age our technology has clearly made us see how connected we.

Harmony is possible

We now have an opportunity to move towards something more unified, sane, and responsible (in fact we always have).  If we can understand and remember that the purpose of our individual lives is inextricably tied to the ultimate purpose of life we can create a more harmonious life.  Peace is possible, but we must get out of our own way and get in touch with our inner most senses.  It is the collective purpose that we must move towards.  This does not mean to lose our sense of our individuality, but rather to incorporate our sense of self with the unified whole of the collective.

In reality it is all much simpler than how I make it out to be.  It is about seeing that our individual differences are petty in comparison to our sense of connection.  It is about seeing that no one or no thing is more important.  It is admitting that we do not have all the answers.  And it is living from an ethic that is sensitive to nature and strives to be considerate of all things.

The Balance Between Being Content yet Aspiring Towards Evolution

How do we aspire for a better life without getting caught up in tomorrow?  How can we remain content with life as it is, but still seek to change a situation?

 

As a race of people capable of complex discernment I think it is a natural tendency for us to aspire towards something "better."  If you were a Native American you sustained your existence through fishing, hunting, and agriculture.  You were interested in developing ways of doing these activities that enabled you to harvest these resources with greater ease and success.  This drive within us that wants a better life is what enables us to evolve.  Yet today, where life options are practically limitless, we can become overwhelmed as to how we wish too see our life unfold.

I do not think you need to be dissatisfied with a life situation in order to see it evolve.  Actually, I feel it shows a sense of passion and vigor for life to have the desire to see your life and the life around you evolve.  I use the word evolve because I feel the word describes directed change.  To evolve denotes that change is something that progressively transcends what was before.

Yet, all to often we get caught up in what we want to see evolve in our lives that we lose our grip on being fully present.  Being content with "what is" takes a degree of present moment awareness that is not by our thoughts that want a different reality to exist.

It's about being aware of your desires and observing your attachment to them.  You cannot be content if you "need" change.  It means to have a vision without your emotions being contingent upon the results.  It takes a concentrated awareness to be grateful that life is presenting you with an opportunity to create and to experience who you are.

It seems that finding emotional balance in our modern thought driven world takes a sort of awareness that has us constantly grateful for life and the experiences it brings yet knowing that our visions and aspirations are not in vain, but rather they represent our efforts as conscious human beings to create a "better" world as we desire it.  Yet it also means surrendering to the fact that we are not controlling our lives to the fullest degree.  And in doing so we need to let go of expectations so that even if our aspirations do not manifest we still maintain a sense of gratitude for what is.

There always seems to be some sort of compromise in life.  This job may be more enjoyable, but it pays less or there is another partner "out there" that you may find more sexually attractive but you feel that another is better for you because they nourish your spirit.  The hypotheticals are endless...but compromise teaches us that we share this world, and our lives, with others.  It's about surrendering to the idea that we always don't know what is best or what we should strive towards.  It's about having faith that each new experience is something that is helping you become the person you are destined to be...even if it is a destiny that never would have imagined for yourself.

So keep striving for "better" as you see it.  For that is what the world needs now more than ever. Strive for a life that enriches the relationship you have with yourself and with others... And attempt to have faith that all is in its right place even if you think it's not.

Seeing Oneself as the Nothing That We Are

Without stillness we are lost.  Maybe not completely, but when the mind consumes us we repeat the same few mantras over and over.  We become consumed with mind activity, and thus we lose sight of all that is within and going on around us.  When I am still I find myself.  In that moment I am "found" because I realize there is nothing to figure out, nothing to know, and nothing to be other than myself.  The moment I try and become something I am no longer true to myself.  The moment I try to understand I move away from understanding.  There is no trying... there is only doing, being and living.

Contemplation is important.  I see it as the middle ground between stillness and mental activity.  With conscious awareness it can become an activity that has us hone in on our repetitive thoughts.  We can then choose if these thoughts serve us or not.  Yet do not be fooled by contemplation.  The moment we identify with new thoughts they become the relative thoughts of tomorrow and thus we get back into the same rut of incessant mental activity.

Often times we compare our lives to others in order to see who we are and who we want to become.  Yet, this only keeps us tied to the dominate thought paradigm that surrounds us.  We then become unable, not to be unique, but rather to be ourselves.  We are all beyond definition.  Every person is more than their title in life.  There is no one person more important or less important than another, unless we declare it as so.  And in our modern world we so often use judgement and comparison to figure out who we are so that we may, for some brief moment, feel a sense of worth.  Yet the irony is that when we seek self worth by comparing ourselves to others we loose sight of who we really are.  We paint the picture of who we are...instead of seeing ourselves for who we really are.

You are more than what you think you are.  You are infinitely nothing.  And to see yourself as undefinable is what brings you in touch with your true self.  True being that you are a phenomena of life.  Your experiences are your true worth from which to draw meaning and true power.

The Mission of Understanding

What a miracle this is.  All of this.  We yearn to discover yet we cannot totally understand the origin of our species, or more grandly speaking, the origin of our universe.  The breath taking feats of science and technology have been able to break open the door to understanding who we are.  We can now look out into the cosmos and understand how small our world is and how life does existence on other planets and distant moons (even if it is not "intelligent" life).  But the mission of understanding life is seemingly endless.  And I fear that our engrained ways of thinking and dogmatic systems of thought have thwarted us from fully absorbing the knowledge that science has put forth.  I humbly admit I forget too often incorporate these truths into my world view.

What a miracle it is that we can type onto a keypad and send protons of electricity into a system that interprets these signals into legible thoughts.  At it's core technology enhances our ability to communicate, not only to each other, but to life itself.  Technology and scientific philosophy enhance our ability to "control" the course of life in a way in which we desire.

Just a short time ago none of this was possible.  Just one million years ago our Earth harbored no intelligent life (or so we believe).  The oceans were colonized by single cell organisms while the lands where barren dessert.  And here we are now, so tiny, yet which actions that collectively effect the entire planet.  Instead of letting our egos take charge by pretending it knows what reality is, why don't we humble our selves and realize how ignorant we all are?  Ignorance is inherently human, yet we deny this and in doing so we suppress some of our greatest abilities.  By not seeing what we do or who we are we never allow ourselves to go beyond the known and grow into something we may actually become.  This relates both to our inner life and our outer life.

The patterns we all replay.  The stories we tell each other will continue to go on.  The things that we accept as reality will stay as "factual" reality.  But only when we admit to ourselves that we really do not know much at all, maybe then will life again become endlessly interesting.  Maybe then will be accelerate our growth, both intrapersonally (in context to oneself) and interpersonally (in context to society.

Perched on a Hill: Observing the Isolation and Unity Between us All

After walking around beautiful prospect park on this sunny winter day I perch myself upon a hill over
looking southern Brooklyn.  I ponder... 

When I witness everyone around me I see how separated our lives are.  We live in our own worlds, with our own feelings, our own ideals, and our own perceptions.  Typically, this individual experience consumes us, yet we yearn for relationship and meaningful experience.  I feel we yearn so that we push ourselves to seek experiences that make us feel whole again.  But what is it to feel "whole?"

To me, the ultimate dichotomy of life, is to feel as if we are living separate lives, yet at the same time we have experiences that make us feel united with everyone and everything.  I feel that this dichotomy shows us something profoundly true, however ethereal.

I sense that there is an energetic chain that connects us all, even if it is just our mental projections.  And in the same way that we are both separate and connected so to does the dichotomy exist that life is both physical and meta-physical.  Yet it is the space between these dichotomies that we can't quite grasp.  Thus, doubt is born.

And so as I overlook southern Brooklyn, I realize I will not stand here forever.  My body is immortal.  And I wonder...what will become of "me?"  What becomes of all of my memories?  Do they accumulate in the reservoir of life's infinite energy...the aspect of life I have faith in?  Or do these memories of mine disintegrate into non-existence? 

I have faith that all of our experiences are not in vain, but rather they are part of something so much larger than the sum of us all...  It is a faith that whispers to me to not fear death... because it tells me that life is endless and unbreakable.  It is a subtle voice that tells me that life only changes form.  And where does this faith come from? I feel it comes from witnessing the profound strength we exemplify to overcome the obstacles that leave us feeling isolated.  It comes from witnessing how strong nature is to maintain a constant homeostasis.  It comes from witnessing how perfect the unfolding of life can be even when disaster strikes.

The yearning we feel to be connected is proof to me that the bonds we feel between each other are more than physical.  There is a void to be filled, however illusory, that proves to me that life is more than what we see.  It eludes to me that both you and I are more than our separate bodies.  And upon reveling in this feeling life becomes profoundly exciting.