"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."
- Soren Kierkegaard
Mostly (he he) this is kind of a test of using my phone to blog.
Recently, I've been researching law - natural law, positive law, divine law. Interestingly enough, the word law originally comes from Old English licgan, to lie. I like the idea that all laws our lies, but in this case I believe lie is like lay. Still. every law is basically 1 person or a group of people telling another person or group of people what they can and cannot do. In fact, by definition, law is something that is enforced by an authority.
Our beliefs are like laws. They bind us, body and mind. Whether they are cultural, political, religious, or ... They bind us to something that is not necessarily true.
Truth can only be discovered by truly looking into what is real, being willing to let go of all assumptions, all concepts, and finding out what you are prior even to mind.
Okay... That's enough by phone.
With love
Aja
"For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery."
Jonathan Swift
I know I haven't written for awhile, but as we often talk about freedom, in all it's various forms (which really is only one), it seemed appropriate that on this day, when everyone is paying homage to their masters, that we should write something about the nature of government.
Like ALL beliefs and superstitions, the "government" is taken for granted. We believe we need government to protect us from the evils of the other side (which is the republicans if you're democrat and democrats if you're a republican). At least in the U.S. Of course, outside of the U.S. it is necessary to keep us safe from 'terrorists', even though governments are the biggest form of terrorism there is. I mean, on today of all days, what would happen if you decided NOT to pay those enslavement fees (also known as taxes) to wage wars on innocent people in other lands, to help subsidize poisoned GMO foods, to generally tell you what you can and more importantly cannot do? Why, yes. You would be fined, and/or imprisoned.
But like all superstitions, we were born into this one. It is the unseen cage, the hidden matrix, that we live with, simply assuming that it is necessary, and that it is the right of some individuals to enslave others, as long as you don't call it slavery.
So what is a superstition. The definition is: Excessively credulous belief in and reverence for a supernatural being. Now, government may not seem to, at first glance, fit the criteria of a supernatural being, but think again. It has nearly invincible power. We obey it's every whim. It graces us with its 'good' and punishes our wrongs. AND, we don't really know where it came from or what maintains it. Sounds pretty God-like to me. But consider - where did government come from. In our case (USA), a few men got together a couple hundred years ago and wrote on a piece of paper, that for all time, THEY and those who followed them were THE government, and that all people must follow them and their wishes in perpetuity. I can guarantee you, if a bunch of us got together and decided to create a new government, we would immediately be thrown in jail unless we had the gunpower and will power to fight off the incumbent government (much as the colonists ultimately did during the revolutionary war). To at least give the 'founding fathers' their due, they did, at the time, attempt to create what was the smallest government footprint ever created in history. Unfortunately, due to the nature of humans and their need for power, that same tiny government is now the largest, most powerful, and most dangerous government the world as ever seen. (What's that saying about the road to hell is paved with good intentions.) The very nature of government means to govern, to rule, to enslave, to tell others what they are ALLOWED to do.
But this is not really the point. The point is that while many of us seek freedom or enlightenment, we fail to realize just how many beliefs and superstitions we hold within ourselves. We want to sail to the shore of freedom without recognizing we're still tightly attached to the dock of ignorance. Ignorance is the opposite of knowledge - knowing what is true and what is not. To rephrase the quote "Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere", we might say, "Ignorance anywhere is ignorance everywhere."
In the last few months, I have been spending much time studying and contemplating the nature of the 'Natural Human'. What exactly does it mean to be natural? How did people live, co-exist, experience life for the thousands and thousands of years prior to our so-called modern era? This is not to say that every indigenous tribe was perfect, didn't necessarily enslave others or followed crazy superstitions of their own, but many if not most were free from many of the hidden enslavements that capture us today.
And in reference to 'Natural', is it not interesting that two of the teachers most respected by Non-dualists, both, directly or indirectly spoke of Natural? The word Nisarga, as in Sri Nisargadatta Maharaja, means 'natural'. Datta means giver. So Nisargadatta means the giver of what is natural. Similarly, Ramana Maharshi spoke of his state as sahaja samadhi. The word sahaja also means natural. The point of enlightenment is to recognize who you are, or as David Godman entitled one of his books about Ramana, "Be Who You Are." Who you are is a Natural Person, intrinsically free. It is my contention that many of the simple tribal people (which we call primitive, suggesting something stupid, rather than primeval and original), were in fact living in the natural state of consciousness which today we would call enlightened, recognizing their state of Presence, Awareness, Consciousness, and their inherent connection to the earth and the Absolute - the things which statism and churchism have taken from us.
Okay, so now for a little entertainment. What follows is a wonderful cartoon based on a talk given by Larken Rose on what might happen if an alien came to check up on us.
(If you wish to understand more about freedom from statism, I recommend you google Larken Rose and Stefan Molyneux. If you'd like to learn more about natural man, check out the website of Robert Wolff at www.wildwolff.com)
I read this quote the other day (I'll tell you who by in a moment) and was nearly brought to tears. What more could we possibly and truly want? However, as many people know, Truth often comes at a very high cost. Jesus said, "The Truth will set you free." He didn't say it would make you happy or fulfill all your wants. It sets you free. In India, the word for 'enlightenment' is Moksha or Mukti, literally meaning liberated or freed. It is not so much the airy fairy groovy world that people think it is, but rather the space of absolute freedom from all your preconceived ideas, your hopes and dreams; all the things that make your life "Your Life".
"In reality, there is no death because you are not the body. Let the body be there or not be there, your existence is always there; it is eternal." - Nisargadatta Maharaja
The other day I was reading somewhere that some Christians actually believe that you ARE the body. This is part of the reason behind burial - you need your body in the resurrection.
Now to me, this is about as absurd as you can get. There is a common saying these days that 'we are not a physical person having a spiritual experience, but rather spiritual entities having a material experience.' We HAVE bodies. They are there. We ride around in them like riding in an automobile. Now, if you knew someone who thought that they were their car, you'd probably want to put them in a looney bin. It's like thinking you're Napoleon Bonaparte or something. "Hi! Like my shiny body and my ragtop convertible? Wanna see my moonroof?" Of course, some people are so attached to their cars that they almost fall into this category. But in most cases you can convince them that the car is, at best, a possession, not what they are.
"The world is like a ride at an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it, you think it's real, because that's how powerful our minds are... And it's fun, for a while... Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: 'Is this real? Or is this just a ride?' And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and they say 'Hey! Don't worry, don't be afraid -- ever -- because... this is just a ride...'
And we kill those people."
- Bill Hicks (1961-1994)
I love this cartoon as it perfectly depicts a favorite analogy of mine... Imagine that you're thrown from an airplane and you are plummeting downward...without a parachute. Now, you've already been thrown, there's nothing you can do about that. You WILL hit the ground - there's nothing you can do about that either. So what ARE your options here, eh???
In the name of Hypocrites, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.
- Edward Everett Hale
(Preface to this blog entry: To many of you this may be simply an unnecessary update on one weird guy's physical/mental/emotional stuff. To those friends/family/students etc. who may have been wondering "What the hell is up with Aja?", this may give some clue. More philosophical/spiritual blogs are coming in the VERY near future - I promise.)
The Barnashram Boys are thrilled! Finally, after three + years of farming, all with only a little riding lawn mower and their arms and backs to haul literally tons of compost, produce, and everything else here, they have acquired a tractor.
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."
