Touch A Rock

Let us suppose that for the duration of this textual exploration the words "THE CLEAR LIGHT" will be used interchangeably with the words "THE REAL" and "THE ETERNAL". What these words refer to is a thing that I, the author, cannot give to you in words. They are words that I will use to refer to something beyond words, beyond time and all linear constructs.
To begin this exploration I wish to provide you with a terrain.
You will need a rock. You have my leave to gather this necessary material before continuing with me on this journey.
Now that you have the rock, (and if you don't have it, then go away and don't come back until you do) please touch it.
Touch a rock.
Not casually, but with everything you've got, touch a rock.
Were you thinking of anything else as you touched it? Or were you fully present with it, wholly open to the communion with that thing that we are calling "rock"? Was it the word "rock" that you brushed against with your mind, or was there something that you encountered with your hand? Or something that you illuminated with your attention, pure and true?
Touch a rock.
What is "rock"? When your hand was on it, were you there? Were you there or were you wandering through a chain of associations that stem from the word “rock“? Were you lost in thought about everything but a boring old rock?
Touch a rock.
What is beyond the word "rock"?
Eternity is not a very long time. Eternity is a state beyond time, outside of time, separate from it.
The human biological machine exists in time. Being is eternal.
When the Machine is locked in a state of identification with its own conflicts and pleasures it is not possible for the experience of Eternity to take root in it. If the machine can manage a state of high indifference to its situation as a machine, to the endless flow of thoughts and feeling that are the whir and buzz of mechanical operations, an interaction with the real becomes possible. We will call this experience “awakening.”
The human biological machine is not a merely physical entity. It is composed of many subtle parts. The emotions and thoughts are also part of the human biological machine. The part of you that thinks of itself as a “me” is a part of the human biological machine and a manifestation of the unfolding of time.
If we can awaken the biological machine so that it may interface with eternity, we create the possibility for Creation, something that is occasionally called “THE GREAT WORK” or simply “THE WORK”. However, to even get to the point of being able to create the possibility for Creation, one must first endeavor to cultivate and maintain for extended periods that state of high indifference, the awakened state of the human biological machine. Often this is called “WORKING” too, but in actuality it is preparation for the REAL WORK that may be possible as a result of these efforts.
This is it, right now.
Touch a rock.
This is ETERNITY.
If you reach out and touch it.
Not casually, but with everything you've got, by making an effort to focus your attention on something that is not part of the struggles and desires of the human biological machine, something that cannot be defined by that linear construct that we call “language.”
While our attention is squandered on the unfolding of the human biological machine we perceive ourselves as moving through time. But this right now, this is ETERNITY, THE CLEAR LIGHT of objective REALITY.
Eternity cannot be something that happens later. It is something that happens right now or it doesn’t happen at all.
If it is THE REAL it can only be NOW.
This is the moment to endeavor to prepare for creative WORK.
Now you should begin to explore the terrain.
Touch a rock.
Thank you.

Survive

Drip drop go the secretions of certain glands that help me to modify my view of reality. REALITY.
The Real. That is what we are searching for, some of us, not all of us. It is important to understand that not everyone wants to discover the Real. Some who do seek it, find it and recoil in terror and never hope to see it again.
I am a robot. I am a bio mechanical doll. Just because I am made of meat and not metal does not indicate that I am something otherwise. I am a sophisticated meat doll. What I like, what I dislike, these things are not ME, these things are programs that I run, or that run me, most of which are programs that nothing which I would call “I” had any hand in creating or choosing. Most of it is quite accidental. Accidental programming.
Strawberries are good, black licorice is bad. Men with facial hair make me wet. When the sun is shining I am gay. Cats are better than dogs. It is never okay to steal. It is okay to lie sometimes. Killing is okay when I am threatened. Christians are good and Muslims are bad. I must sleep in a bed. The bed must have sheets and blankets. I must make at least 30K a year. I must have a car to drive.
All of these things are arbitrary. None of these programs represents something that is objectively true. It is just something that came into me, a demon that inhabits my temple and sways me to do this or that, pushes me to do things in a way that comply with the program’s directives.
Everyone around me is the same. We bounce off of each other like bumper cars. No one is better merely because they are the Hebrews or The Romans, or The Barbarians. One preference is not better than another. One genetic trait is not better than another. Some things serve the perpetuation of the species. That is not “Good”. That is serving the perpetuation of the species, neither good nor bad, simply a thing to see as it is, a thing that need not be colored with intense moral implications. So often it is. Survival is all. The survival of the meat bots. We think we are superior to every other thing that bops around on this planet. We are the best!
S- U –P- E -R! Super! Super duper biological machines, turning oxygen into carbon dioxide. Whoo hoo! Somehow, what we think to explain our own presence here, is what makes us better than the rest. Better than dogs because when we fuck, we do it within the bounds of holy matrimony and produce children to please GOD. GOD, a construct of our bewildered and imaginative minds. Or it’s better because we do it facing one another, so then we can LOVE one another. We are better because we can see the difference between right and wrong. And we decide what is right and wrong based on what is best for us.
There is no objective right or wrong. We cannot objectively be better than any other organism. We do not conduct ourselves in service to these lofty morals that we dreamed up, we dream up these lofty morals to serve our real master, the master program, the uncontrollable urge to survive at any cost.
Whatever threatens ME is bad, is evil. If I need to step on Negroes or Jews or Palestinians to have what I need, to secure MY safety, then that is okay. I can crush whatever stands between me and my survival, and even my quality of life (quality of life = comfort, as in I need control of the water supply so that my children may swim on a hot day while yours are seated in the dry dust pleading for a single drop to drink) and that is GOOD.
Is that really the BEST? Is this what makes man the crown of creation? Are we worthy of the praise we bestow upon ourselves while we slaughter dolphins and crush children and trample trees?
It is subjective.
It is subjective.
We are machines run by programs created by un-named authors.
We are ruled by Accident, Chaos, and our main directive, our impulse to survive at any cost

Thought and Knowledge

Our language, and through our language, our hidden mechanisms of observing and imagining reality, tend towards permanence. We think in terms of things being steady, firm and unified. A rock is a rock. A single clear unit that stays, wherever it may come from and wherever it may go, it retains its unity and its completeness and separateness. And given that we see it as "rock" it retains its identity and we project it into the past and into the future. We stand before a rock and in our minds the rock, as it is, has a past that extends into the obscurity of unknown origins and a future that extends into the brightness of infinite possibility.
This way of observing, thinking and imagining, extends to all our concepts and ideas, including thought itself. And so, a "thought" becomes like a "rock". A thought becomes a single steady unified entity that stays and is complete. A "thought" has a past and a future, and it can be relied upon to manifest and emerge into the light when called upon. A mind may then be pictured as a large bag full of solid thoughts, thoughts that crowd each other, sometimes crash into each other and sometimes even come together to form a larger unit. To learn, in this visualization, is to augment the bag with additional "thoughts" – facts, ideas, theories, concepts, techniques and so on. A "wise man" then is one who owns a large bag of "thoughts". An ignorant man’s bag is nearly empty.
Following this path, in looking for a guide, we would look for the being with the bag that is heaviest and most full of these permanent and solid thoughts. Such a being would then be able to impart these single, complete and solid thoughts one at a time, as needed. As the student learns, another solid single thought would be given and the student’s bag would grow in time, filling itself with new permanent and complete thoughts. Eventually these would be passed on to another.
But thoughts may bubble sideways, they may encounter a corner and come out drenched in different colors, thoughts may one day turn soft and in their softness climb a hidden stairway and become that which they weren’t, they may break in two and then in two again, they may dance in a frenzy and collect into tiny beads of sweat along your forehead, they may drip from your chin, they may twist around your tongue to be spat onto your lover’s mouth, they may fill you with intense lust and lift your feet forward and out, and so they may break in three and one may travel out and one may hide and another may expand so far that you will lose sight of it and you may then ask: "Did I ever really know anything?"
Such playful and infinite bursts of energy cannot truly be contained, and not even the limits of our human language will prevent them from running away and finding new homes where they may rest for a while before continuing on their endless journey… our endless journey. As long as they are alive they will continue changing and moving and transforming.
A true wise man knows to not even attempt to enclose them, knows that any force that is inclined to wrestle them onto submission will produce only death and dust, and rocks… Any attempt to capture and enslave the raw energy of creation will only result in the warden becoming a slave to his own prison. In trying to make them permanent, the mind will lose its explosive burning life and be reduced to a quiet cemetery where old, tired ideas come to rest.

And yet we can learn.
And yet we can be taught.
And yet there is a Teaching.
And yet there are Teachers.

What is it then that a wise Being can pass onto us that will not trap us or enslave us but set us on fire, propelling us up and out into the vast unknown?
What is the Knowledge that is not a thought but makes all other thoughts dance?