So you're saying the biggest stumbling block is perception?
Er, kind of, yes, not to mention the programmed mind that's only able to focus on things, and our beliefs which are so powerful, but so often used by the ego to stay in control.
What? You're saying the ego uses religion to stay in control?
Well obviously, yes. It has to use everything at its disposal, so if the person's of a religious bent, the ego doesn't ever engage in head on conflict - that's ineffective and counter-productive. Instead it subverts or manipulates by bringing up your secret, darkest fears, doubts and phobias. That way it allows you to gaol yourself and hand over the keys to the ego. The best thing about this set up is you're not even aware you're doing it. You believe and assume you're free. You rationalise - "I may have a few irrational fears, but they're my fears and harming no one else, and I can deal with them, honest I can, just as soon as I need to." Little do you suspect that those fears, doubts and phobias are the result of your unwillingness to confront the simple truth - your unwillingness to confront Nought.
Why do you keep insisting I'm unwilling to confront Nought.
Because everything else is secondary.
But what's so scary about Nought. It's just nothing, isn't it.
No, it's THE nothing.
Which one do you mean?
The one that completely and utterly collapses the wave form of all that is, leaving nothing in its place - not even life.
Oh my God. Even life?
Precisely. So you can imagine why people might prefer not to know anything about it. Talk about futility! Imagine knowing that everything you did, and everything you are still amounts to Nought, simply because mathematically 0=1. What's the point in going on? is a perfectly natural question in that context.
Nought, in fact, is worse than death, because at least with death you can tell yourself that you've had a life, you've existed and now that you're dead you may in some way, shape or form continue - through your children, through your works, your legacy - but as far as Nought is concerned, the answer is an emphatic NO - it's a huge Ozymandias moment - nothing remains - not even a few statues standing in a desert.
So maybe we should dispense with Nought if it's so obviously a downer.
We need it.
We do? You could have fooled me.
Of course we do, for without it we are trapped in I-mind/ what matters. The flat, linear version of consciousness which cannot deliver the goods - which cannot bring us back to our senses...
And Nought the avenger, Nought the destroyer can, you're saying. I for one fail to see how anything as uncompromisingly dissolutionary as Nought can be of any service to humanity or the so called conscious awareness.
Yes, that's perfectly reasonable and understandable too, but we now can't survive without it.
What do you mean?
Well, the reality we're apparently stuck in is now growing increasingly unstable. Think of ice melting underfoot. Holes are going to start appearing. There will be nothing in those holes. It's going to cause a certain amount of panic, until we learn how to work with Nought.
You're telling me it'll cause panic - it sounds like the nothingness eating up Fantasia in the Neverending story.
Very similar.
But why? Where does it come from?
Well, there are 7 billion of us now, and we've been spreading the pastry thinner and thinner, and it's not able to spread any further. Everything material has its limit, and we reached that limit a few years ago. We're now moving into a fascinating period of escalating disintegration of the very fabric of our erstwhile seemingly material reality. We're going to start seeing at first hand that our material reality in fact has no backing. It's conjured out of thin air - or dreamt up, in fact, by the conscious awareness.
Well I find that hard to believe.
Me too, and yet, the mathematics are clear as clear. 0=1, otherwise there would be no balance in anything whatsoever. We have to play a kind of magic trick, like a conjurer, and if it's done cleverly then the eyes fail to see how it's done, and the mind certainly can't work it out as the mind's only really able to consider things within the system - either one side or the other, never the twain together. Anyway, where was I?
You were saying material reality has no backing - it's conjured out of thin air. Ridiculous notion.
Absolutely. Completely ridiculous, but no more ridiculous than the alternative - that reality just created itself from nothing in a purely spontaneous big bang.
Well, there's always God if you don't accept scientific explanations.
Oh, but I do accept explanations, but I prefer to know what, if anything, they're explaining. This one, known as "big bang", is obviously explaining the creation of our particular version of reality, which required us to slam a door in our mind shut, and shut it's remained ever since. Doors tend to bang when you slam them shut, and if you slam them very very hard, then the bang can be very very big. In fact, it can be big enough to conjure up an entire universe.
Don't be absurd. The universe wasn't conjured up by a door being slammed. It was created by objective forces. These forces can still be measured today as background radiation.
Hum... is that so? In that case, how do you account for this.
Merry disappears, melting into thin air, then reappears a moment later on the other side of the room.
At first Zie's a little freaked out. Eventually, when he's calmed down a bit he insists it was just an optical illusion.
You see, Zie, the mind will not, cannot accept that it only has half the picture - that it doesn't, can't, won't see what pertains to Nought, the other side of the equation, for to do so would destroy this oh so captivating illusion.
It isn't an illusion.
Want to bet?
Not really. It's absurd to bet on something that cannot possibly be true. In any case, you might try to trick me. You might use hypnosis or some mental projection to temporarily make the illusion shift or disappear altogether.
So there's no way whatsoever, and no grounds that would enable you to question or consider the alternative - that I might be right.
None whatsoever.
Fair enough. In which case I'm done.
You're what? What do you mean.
It matters not. I'm done. See you Zie.
What do you mean you're done? You can't just go. You can't just desert me.
Wanna bet? I was only sticking around because there was the possibility no matter how remote that you might agree to consider "other", but now that I see that you won't - my job is complete.
Merry vanishes, and never returns.
Zie at first is shocked, a little heart broken too. He could never believe Merry would simply abandon him. It seems somewhat heartless, does it not? A few months later Zie begins to accept that Merry is not returning. There's a hole in his life... an emptiness. It's hardly surprising - they have been friends for so long. Zie realises that this emptiness is hurting him - gnawing at his vitality. He knows it isn't going away. His friendship with Merry was always full of love and magic. Merry must have touched him in some way, deeply.
I'm going to have to fight this one - Zie tells himself. There's no point letting it destroy me. I need to find the source of this emptiness troubling me. I need to get it out, onto paper. So Zie, quite unexpectedly starts writing. Even more unexpected is the form his writing takes - namely children's poems - he calls them Spells. He has no idea why, but it doesn't really matter, does it. The main thing is that it seems to help. The more he writes, the more he's able to make inroads into the emptiness; to start an alchemical process transforming the pain and nothingness into something else.
And here's one of the poems he wrote:
“Oh sky overhead you are mighty and wise,
Er, kind of, yes, not to mention the programmed mind that's only able to focus on things, and our beliefs which are so powerful, but so often used by the ego to stay in control.
What? You're saying the ego uses religion to stay in control?
Well obviously, yes. It has to use everything at its disposal, so if the person's of a religious bent, the ego doesn't ever engage in head on conflict - that's ineffective and counter-productive. Instead it subverts or manipulates by bringing up your secret, darkest fears, doubts and phobias. That way it allows you to gaol yourself and hand over the keys to the ego. The best thing about this set up is you're not even aware you're doing it. You believe and assume you're free. You rationalise - "I may have a few irrational fears, but they're my fears and harming no one else, and I can deal with them, honest I can, just as soon as I need to." Little do you suspect that those fears, doubts and phobias are the result of your unwillingness to confront the simple truth - your unwillingness to confront Nought.
Why do you keep insisting I'm unwilling to confront Nought.
Because everything else is secondary.
But what's so scary about Nought. It's just nothing, isn't it.
No, it's THE nothing.
Which one do you mean?
The one that completely and utterly collapses the wave form of all that is, leaving nothing in its place - not even life.
Oh my God. Even life?
Precisely. So you can imagine why people might prefer not to know anything about it. Talk about futility! Imagine knowing that everything you did, and everything you are still amounts to Nought, simply because mathematically 0=1. What's the point in going on? is a perfectly natural question in that context.
Nought, in fact, is worse than death, because at least with death you can tell yourself that you've had a life, you've existed and now that you're dead you may in some way, shape or form continue - through your children, through your works, your legacy - but as far as Nought is concerned, the answer is an emphatic NO - it's a huge Ozymandias moment - nothing remains - not even a few statues standing in a desert.
So maybe we should dispense with Nought if it's so obviously a downer.
We need it.
We do? You could have fooled me.
Of course we do, for without it we are trapped in I-mind/ what matters. The flat, linear version of consciousness which cannot deliver the goods - which cannot bring us back to our senses...
And Nought the avenger, Nought the destroyer can, you're saying. I for one fail to see how anything as uncompromisingly dissolutionary as Nought can be of any service to humanity or the so called conscious awareness.
Yes, that's perfectly reasonable and understandable too, but we now can't survive without it.
What do you mean?
Well, the reality we're apparently stuck in is now growing increasingly unstable. Think of ice melting underfoot. Holes are going to start appearing. There will be nothing in those holes. It's going to cause a certain amount of panic, until we learn how to work with Nought.
You're telling me it'll cause panic - it sounds like the nothingness eating up Fantasia in the Neverending story.
Very similar.
But why? Where does it come from?
Well, there are 7 billion of us now, and we've been spreading the pastry thinner and thinner, and it's not able to spread any further. Everything material has its limit, and we reached that limit a few years ago. We're now moving into a fascinating period of escalating disintegration of the very fabric of our erstwhile seemingly material reality. We're going to start seeing at first hand that our material reality in fact has no backing. It's conjured out of thin air - or dreamt up, in fact, by the conscious awareness.
Well I find that hard to believe.
Me too, and yet, the mathematics are clear as clear. 0=1, otherwise there would be no balance in anything whatsoever. We have to play a kind of magic trick, like a conjurer, and if it's done cleverly then the eyes fail to see how it's done, and the mind certainly can't work it out as the mind's only really able to consider things within the system - either one side or the other, never the twain together. Anyway, where was I?
You were saying material reality has no backing - it's conjured out of thin air. Ridiculous notion.
Absolutely. Completely ridiculous, but no more ridiculous than the alternative - that reality just created itself from nothing in a purely spontaneous big bang.
Well, there's always God if you don't accept scientific explanations.
Oh, but I do accept explanations, but I prefer to know what, if anything, they're explaining. This one, known as "big bang", is obviously explaining the creation of our particular version of reality, which required us to slam a door in our mind shut, and shut it's remained ever since. Doors tend to bang when you slam them shut, and if you slam them very very hard, then the bang can be very very big. In fact, it can be big enough to conjure up an entire universe.
Don't be absurd. The universe wasn't conjured up by a door being slammed. It was created by objective forces. These forces can still be measured today as background radiation.
Hum... is that so? In that case, how do you account for this.
Merry disappears, melting into thin air, then reappears a moment later on the other side of the room.
At first Zie's a little freaked out. Eventually, when he's calmed down a bit he insists it was just an optical illusion.
You see, Zie, the mind will not, cannot accept that it only has half the picture - that it doesn't, can't, won't see what pertains to Nought, the other side of the equation, for to do so would destroy this oh so captivating illusion.
It isn't an illusion.
Want to bet?
Not really. It's absurd to bet on something that cannot possibly be true. In any case, you might try to trick me. You might use hypnosis or some mental projection to temporarily make the illusion shift or disappear altogether.
So there's no way whatsoever, and no grounds that would enable you to question or consider the alternative - that I might be right.
None whatsoever.
Fair enough. In which case I'm done.
You're what? What do you mean.
It matters not. I'm done. See you Zie.
What do you mean you're done? You can't just go. You can't just desert me.
Wanna bet? I was only sticking around because there was the possibility no matter how remote that you might agree to consider "other", but now that I see that you won't - my job is complete.
Merry vanishes, and never returns.
Zie at first is shocked, a little heart broken too. He could never believe Merry would simply abandon him. It seems somewhat heartless, does it not? A few months later Zie begins to accept that Merry is not returning. There's a hole in his life... an emptiness. It's hardly surprising - they have been friends for so long. Zie realises that this emptiness is hurting him - gnawing at his vitality. He knows it isn't going away. His friendship with Merry was always full of love and magic. Merry must have touched him in some way, deeply.
I'm going to have to fight this one - Zie tells himself. There's no point letting it destroy me. I need to find the source of this emptiness troubling me. I need to get it out, onto paper. So Zie, quite unexpectedly starts writing. Even more unexpected is the form his writing takes - namely children's poems - he calls them Spells. He has no idea why, but it doesn't really matter, does it. The main thing is that it seems to help. The more he writes, the more he's able to make inroads into the emptiness; to start an alchemical process transforming the pain and nothingness into something else.
And here's one of the poems he wrote:
The frog
A frog sat on his log and sighed,
Something was wrong, something empty inside,
He gazed in the water, tried eating a fly,
But still felt unhappy, and didn’t know why.
The frog wasn’t lazy, it wanted to know
What was making it sigh, the cause of its woe,
So it put on a jacket, then straightened its tie,
And when it was ready it called to the sky:
“Oh sky overhead you are mighty and wise,
Protector of frogs and provider of flies,
With rain you replenish the ponds down below,
With sunlight you warm us and make the plants grow,
Dear sky in your mercy, please help me to see
The cause of the emptiness troubling me.”
Lost in a trance frog stared up above,
And there in a vision caught sight of a dove
That was flying around, and seemed to be saying
“Come join me, I’ll answer the prayer you were praying.”
Frog leapt in the air, as if in a dream,
And found himself flying high over the stream
That flows to his pond from a field lush and green,
And there at its source, he heard the dove say:
“This water brings life to the tadpoles who play,
This water brings life to all creatures who use it,
Its spirit is in you, its spirit today
Needs your help little frog, needs the heart of a poet,
To see it and praise it, to love it and know it.”
Frog sat on his log, something burning inside,
He remembered the dove and his magical flight,
He took a deep breath and started to croak,
And the song of the water of life now awoke
In the heart of the frog. As he sang he could feel
The song was alive, with the power to heal,
That all would be well, for magic is real
When it shines like a star, when it spins like a wheel.
Ironic isn't it, that Zie of all people should write such a poem or spell? The thing is that he doesn't just write it - he kind of lives it, feels it, experiences it. Whatever it is referring to has already become a part of Zie's life. Now don't get me wrong - he'd still laugh if you suggested there was anything literal in the poem - that he, perhaps, was the frog, or that he was converting to some kind of shamanism or belief in magic. "No, no, no - that's all plain absurd!" he'll tell you, turning up his nose, but if you look at Zie's patterns, his behaviour, his off-moments when he isn't really thinking what he's doing - when he's just being or doing stuff spontaneously, you'll find that he's shifting little by little, shifting away from the kind of "that can't be real, it doesn't make sense" person he used to be, to a more thoughtful "that's interesting, I wonder what it is/ how it works" kind of person. And that, apparently, so Merry says, is enough to get the ball rolling. The rest happens naturally - as naturally as water flowing down a hill or flowing into a living body...
"Surely Merry will come back" Zie thinks from time to time - most days actually, but in the meantime, without consciously being aware of it, Zie is moving towards Merry, connecting the dots, allowing more and more of Merry's magic into his life... and his soul, whatever "the soul" might be, is, believe it or not, sprouting wings - teeny ones to be sure, but at times they flutter just a little, which gives Zie a strange feeling of something beyond the boundaries of normal material-reality.
To be continued...
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