Post by enigma on Apr 30, 2011 12:40:52 GMT -5
I posted this elsewhere but I thought it might be useful here, or at least a distraction from the karma points discussion. Hehe.
All searching is the search for permanent happiness, regardless of what it's called. If it's clear that all periods of happiness result, in some way, no matter how subtle, in an exactly equal amount of unhappiness, we would all lose interest in the pursuit. If it were more obvious than it usually is; if an hour of happiness were immediately followed by an hour of equal and opposite unhappiness, we would quickly tire of the roller coaster, become exhausted, and come to rest wherever we are. Movement just for the sake of movement is no longer about being happy, it's just an attempt to keep alive the idea of the person who is moving, and this becomes oppressive and exhausting.
So the question becomes, can the happiness that 7 billion people are continuously looking for their entire lives actually be found? Is it even possible? We're all familiar with the basic idea of how dualistic perception works: 'Hot' is a dualistic idea that is only experienced as a reality against the background of the idea of 'cold'. In the absence of either of those polar ideas there is no conceptually formed experience of hot or cold. The experiences cannot be stored in memory and recalled later as 'my experience of hot' or 'that was really cold'.
In the absence of the concepts, there is just the raw, unmediated experience of THIS, without conceptualization or the attending stories about those conceptualized experiences. IOW, there is only the present moment of THIS, and THIS, and THIS, always happening now. The quality of the experience of THIS is radically different from the experience of the concepts ABOUT THIS, as everyone here knows who has had even the most brief glimpse of 'being fully present'. This is the 'real' world, but almost everybody lives almost their entire lives in a conceptual world ABOUT this real world.
The conceptual experience of hot and cold is an imaginary, dualistic imitation world formed in the mind, and it's this personal world in which most people live. There isn't actually a memory structured, conceptual, dualistic world of hot and cold. This is the illusion; a thought constructed world in which we live out our lives in a kind of dreamy somnambulism because it feels safer, more structured, predictable and controllable. Since it IS an illusion, it's really none of those things. It's an imaginary world in which all experiences are literally dependent entirely on the opposite experience, and so in order for one idea to have an experiential quality, the other idea must be simultaneously present in mind. I can only recall the experience of 'hot' as long as I can recall the experience of 'cold' that defines it. All dualistic experiences are mutually defining and, as they say, two sides of the same coin.
Memory is highly volatile, and so if for some reason you didn't experience cold for some period of days, weeks or months, the experience of 'hot' would actually begin to fade, even if 'objectively' you're experiencing nothing BUT hot. The experience loses it's defining opposing quality and the whole duality starts collapsing as an experiential reality. You may be sweating continuously, and yet you can't really say what it is to be hot because you can no longer clearly recall what it's like to be cold.
All dualistic conceptualizations work this way, and so in order to have the dualistic experience of being happy, you must, at the same time, have a clear recollection of what it is to be unhappy. Your subjective experience of being happy is literally defined, at that moment, by your ability to contrast it with your past experience of being unhappy. This is not usually happening on a fully conscious level, but if you look at that feeling of happiness, you can see that it is painted against the background of your own perception of unhappiness in that moment. You can see that, if you've been seriously unhappy for a while, it actually takes very little to make you happy. If you've been deliriously happy for a while, there's almost nothing that can keep you there.
Hencely, there is a continual, self regulating, self defining, completely balanced movement between happy and unhappy. In spite of what we tell ourselves in order to keep this movement going, the subjective balance of happiness and unhappiness cannot be tipped in either direction and kept there. There isn't even actually a state of happy or unhappy, just the movement from one polarity to the other and back again. The feeling of anticipation is enjoyed while the movement is happening, and when the movement stops briefly at the 'destination', there is the momentary absence of desire which is experienced as happiness, and then the movement begins in the other direction. This is how everyone's life has unfolded, and will continue to unfold, whether they admit it or not. This is how ALL experience works for everybody. All duality sticks have two opposite ends. There are no one-ended sticks.
There is a way out of this, which is what non-duality is all about, but it must be clear that it is not about finding permanent dualistic happiness, and this pursuit has to come to an end. There is an enormous amount of energy and momentum invested in this search, and this is the single greatest obstacle to Freedom.
All searching is the search for permanent happiness, regardless of what it's called. If it's clear that all periods of happiness result, in some way, no matter how subtle, in an exactly equal amount of unhappiness, we would all lose interest in the pursuit. If it were more obvious than it usually is; if an hour of happiness were immediately followed by an hour of equal and opposite unhappiness, we would quickly tire of the roller coaster, become exhausted, and come to rest wherever we are. Movement just for the sake of movement is no longer about being happy, it's just an attempt to keep alive the idea of the person who is moving, and this becomes oppressive and exhausting.
So the question becomes, can the happiness that 7 billion people are continuously looking for their entire lives actually be found? Is it even possible? We're all familiar with the basic idea of how dualistic perception works: 'Hot' is a dualistic idea that is only experienced as a reality against the background of the idea of 'cold'. In the absence of either of those polar ideas there is no conceptually formed experience of hot or cold. The experiences cannot be stored in memory and recalled later as 'my experience of hot' or 'that was really cold'.
In the absence of the concepts, there is just the raw, unmediated experience of THIS, without conceptualization or the attending stories about those conceptualized experiences. IOW, there is only the present moment of THIS, and THIS, and THIS, always happening now. The quality of the experience of THIS is radically different from the experience of the concepts ABOUT THIS, as everyone here knows who has had even the most brief glimpse of 'being fully present'. This is the 'real' world, but almost everybody lives almost their entire lives in a conceptual world ABOUT this real world.
The conceptual experience of hot and cold is an imaginary, dualistic imitation world formed in the mind, and it's this personal world in which most people live. There isn't actually a memory structured, conceptual, dualistic world of hot and cold. This is the illusion; a thought constructed world in which we live out our lives in a kind of dreamy somnambulism because it feels safer, more structured, predictable and controllable. Since it IS an illusion, it's really none of those things. It's an imaginary world in which all experiences are literally dependent entirely on the opposite experience, and so in order for one idea to have an experiential quality, the other idea must be simultaneously present in mind. I can only recall the experience of 'hot' as long as I can recall the experience of 'cold' that defines it. All dualistic experiences are mutually defining and, as they say, two sides of the same coin.
Memory is highly volatile, and so if for some reason you didn't experience cold for some period of days, weeks or months, the experience of 'hot' would actually begin to fade, even if 'objectively' you're experiencing nothing BUT hot. The experience loses it's defining opposing quality and the whole duality starts collapsing as an experiential reality. You may be sweating continuously, and yet you can't really say what it is to be hot because you can no longer clearly recall what it's like to be cold.
All dualistic conceptualizations work this way, and so in order to have the dualistic experience of being happy, you must, at the same time, have a clear recollection of what it is to be unhappy. Your subjective experience of being happy is literally defined, at that moment, by your ability to contrast it with your past experience of being unhappy. This is not usually happening on a fully conscious level, but if you look at that feeling of happiness, you can see that it is painted against the background of your own perception of unhappiness in that moment. You can see that, if you've been seriously unhappy for a while, it actually takes very little to make you happy. If you've been deliriously happy for a while, there's almost nothing that can keep you there.
Hencely, there is a continual, self regulating, self defining, completely balanced movement between happy and unhappy. In spite of what we tell ourselves in order to keep this movement going, the subjective balance of happiness and unhappiness cannot be tipped in either direction and kept there. There isn't even actually a state of happy or unhappy, just the movement from one polarity to the other and back again. The feeling of anticipation is enjoyed while the movement is happening, and when the movement stops briefly at the 'destination', there is the momentary absence of desire which is experienced as happiness, and then the movement begins in the other direction. This is how everyone's life has unfolded, and will continue to unfold, whether they admit it or not. This is how ALL experience works for everybody. All duality sticks have two opposite ends. There are no one-ended sticks.
There is a way out of this, which is what non-duality is all about, but it must be clear that it is not about finding permanent dualistic happiness, and this pursuit has to come to an end. There is an enormous amount of energy and momentum invested in this search, and this is the single greatest obstacle to Freedom.