Thought for the Day :-)

"The moment your mouth engages gear…

All Non Duality disappears"

Words by the Nutter from Nottingham.

Inspiration from Tony Henrys

Everything And Nothing

Let’s start with Everything.

everything (pronoun)

1 all things, or all the things of a group or class.
2 the most important thing or aspect: money isn’t everything.
3 the current situation; life in general.

The Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English

‘Everything’ is ‘All’… excluding nothing. Therefore “Everything in the Universe” has to be a definition of;

‘All Things Great and Small’.

noun ( the universe)
1 all existing matter and space considered as a whole; the cosmos.

The latter ‘by definition’ excludes nothing whatsoever… I’m struggling to get this point over because although we have used words for centuries, we seem to want them to fit our our preconceptions (caused by education aka… the acquisition of knowledge) rather than just their absolutely and clear obvious meaning. (See the King and the marksman story below:)

You can try to describe the Universe as whatever you want, but if it’s everything, then that is exactly what it is.

Breaking it down into bits and giving them different names is just semantics. (A Play with Words:)

The Reality of the Universe does exist. You can’t possibly deny awareness of that. The fact that you are reading this and having some sort of interaction with it means that awareness does exist.

Your interaction is very probably totally natural, from your point of view… like, dislike, don’t care etc.

All or any of the above are thoughts… and they come from mind (programmed education). We all think we know what a brain is but where the mind exists is not… and has not ever been known.

~

And so, on to Nothing…

nothing (pronoun)

1 not anything.
2 something of no importance or concern.
3 nought.

The Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English

Nothing is here defined in another bunch of words. No… Thing has to be something that doesn’t exist, because if it did it would be something.

I know I bang on about this semantics stuff (which is the only way I can play with this Knowledge) BUT… this shows why we get so confused.

‘Not anything’… is a concept: because the reality of Nothing is inexpressible.
‘something of no importance or concern’… just turned from nothing to something :)
and
‘nought’ is right up there with my friend ‘zero’(see Infinity and Zero)

~

Why these definitions Don’t Work

All this stuff hinges on just one thing… the Ego accepting that Knowledge (as defined by Society) is a good thing. Not just a good thing, but everything worthwhile. I have tried to explain before that knowledge is just another language and the latter only exists as expressions of Duality.

To understand beingness, is-ness and all the other expressions of this, one has to see the fallacy of holding onto concepts, knowledge from education and all forms of duality.

Knowledge is good for building bridges etc but is totally irrelevant to Reality.

Accepting this as a starting point in awareness is the first step. While you use and hold onto concepts as the definitive ‘rhyme and reason’ for everything, there will always be suffering.

Suffering exists, only because We define it. We have been taught to trust our thoughts and feelings. Why?

We believe that We are important and that We matter and what We think matters…

We have filled ourselves up with propaganda that We ourselves have created. We denounced Hitler and Mao Tse Tung for exactly the same reasons and called them bad, evil etc, but because of the tribal nature We have been taught to believe in, We see right and wrong and good and bad everywhere.

Everything is the only thing… and Nothing Matters!

There’s the story of the Baby bear playing outside it’s cave when it becomes aware of a huge tiger approaching it…

It decides to follow it’s instincts and stand on it’s hind legs and growls at the tiger.

The tiger changes it’s attack into retreat and the baby bear smiles a huge smug smile, goes back onto all fours and continues playing.

During this time, what the baby bear didn’t notice was that right behind him, his 12ft mother had raised herself up onto her hind legs to face the tiger as well.

The question from this story is… what are you and what is the Universe?

Are you the baby or the mother?

The corollary of this is… who ‘I’ is, is Everything (God if you like)

I am not and cannot possibly be separate from Everything, and neither can you. Believing that is why we suffer.

NB. I know this can’t explain it for you… and I’m sorry but a good place to start is still… not to believe your thoughts.(And certainly not mine:)

It’s your ego that wants you to. Why trust something that comes from all the propaganda you were brought up on?

Just Be at peace with what you Is… (er…R:-)

~

“You listen,” said the Master, ”not to discover… but to find something that confirms your own thoughts.

You argue, not to find the truth… but to vindicate your thinking.”

And he told of a king who, passing through a small town, saw indications of amazing marksmanship everywhere. Trees and barns and fences had circles painted on them with a bullet hole in the exact center. He asked to see this unusual marksman. It turned out to be a ten-year-old child.

“This is incredible,” said the king in wonder. “How in the world do you do it?”

“Easy as pie,” was the answer. “I shoot first and draw the circles later.”

“So you get your conclusions first and build your premises around them later,” said the Master. “Isn't that the way you manage to hold on to your religion and to your ideology?”

Anthony De Mello, SJ