In my vision, from a very abstract view, experience has only 3 qualities:
* Vision = The extent of your seeing.
* Power = The extent of your power.
* Sustainability = The extent you can sustain the power.
Power, in its purest form, is self-transformation.
Everything else is a kind of shadow or substitute.
* Control over others or environment = A consolation for lacking the power to see and transform oneself.
It’s reactive and it needs endless force and maintenance.
It is also just blind loyalty to a self you have falsely identified with.
* Self-control = An intermediate step.
It’s internalized power, but limited.
You can restrain impulses or habits, but you’re still structually bound to the mind or circumstances.
It’s like steering a boat along a river you didn’t build.
* Self-transformation = The ultimate power.
Especially when Vision + Power converge: You see what you truly are + actively shape your consciousness and being.
It’s the ability to remodel the very field/structure of existence you inhabit.
True agency is always inward first; everything external is secondary.
Ofc, generating a massive burst of power is not as difficult as sustaining it.
The real challenge is in re-engineering your system to sustain that power/voltage.
The 2 variables of environment and control
There are 2 variables: Environment, Control
This could apply to the external (outer-circumstances) or internal (identity) domain.
From the most pleasant to the most unpleasant, I can think of 4 levels:
1. You could have an environment so good, that is not only already pleasant, but more and more pleasantness keeps outpouring/blossoming from it. No control is even needed in this case. Blessings are simply overflowing without any intervention.
2. You could have an environment that is stable and neutral, such that, you can use your effort to get more and more pleasure. This would be the realm of hobbies, passions, explorations, romances, achievements, endeavours, adventures etc.
3. You could have a hostile environment, that is quite unstable, such that it imprisons and enslaves you even to just maintain stability. Here there is constant struggle, using control just to keep things ok.
4. You could have an environment so hostile, and so unstable, that everything around you devolves and worsens, and even the exertion of all your control only slows and makes somewhat bearable this unstoppable fall.
I could call the first 2 levels as heavens and the last 2 levels as hells.
The 1st world, 2nd world ——vs—— The 3rd world, 4th world
A tool for understanding your environment
What is the environment you are living in right now?
Synonyms:
Environment/situation/surroundings/condition/circumstance/atmosphere (ESSCCA)
Examine these dimensions in your surroundings:
# The physical-sensory ESSCCA
# The emotional-relational-connection ESSCCA
# The mental-interests ESSCCA
# The philosophical-abstract ESSCCA
# The energy ESSCCA
Accordingly, what food are you consuming in these dimensions?
What:
# Physical food
# Emotional/Relational food
# Mental food
# Philosophical-abstract food
# Energy food
The seed and the tree
The seed is the innate potential.
The tree is what the environment allows in the seed.
This seed-tree analogy could be applied to multiple truths/contexts.
For instance:
Your DNA/Biology is like your seed,
While your social ego/self/identity/conditioning would be like the tree.
The seed’s responsibility is to give out all of its potential.
The tree’s responsibility is to stay a match/align to its environment.
The repression of the reality of death
There is a fundamental imbalance I have noticed as a pattern throughout civilization and society (the one around me now).
Death has not been integrated into Life.
We repress anything to do with death and handle it in a kind of desperate uneasy way, we shield the reality of this as much as we can and when it happens it carries the context of: “What an unexpected tragedy, this should not have happened, this is unfair and sudden, but I will have to do whatever I can to manage this (said despondently)”.
Why should this be the case?
Why is the collective repressing the reality of death?
That I feel is the true elephant in the room that is being repressed.
We all play/act and pretend like it does not exist and we have an implicit agreement to never speak or discuss it unless really needed and only to the extent required.
This collective repression and denial of the reality of death has consequences throughout the ways in which we live our lives.
Every aspect of our lifestyle carries this feature too.
Marriage/new relationships are celebrated, while breakups are looked down upon, like “There must be a mistake, this is really wrong, should not happen etc.”.
Even the word breakup carries such a violent unceremonious negative connotation.
How can creativity flow freely if things once acquired are simply frozen?
Both the processes of acquisition and dissolution are like 2 wings of the bird of freedom/change/creative flow.
We are actually stifling the movement of life by denying the reality of death, because they both need each other for the higher purpose which is flow, expression, and creation.
There is a similar situation with consumer products.
It is so easy to purchase products now with the whole global e-commerce now booming in the online sphere.
But it is at least 10 times more difficult to find information and sell what you already possess. It is even difficult to find useful ways to pass on what you have even free of cost in a way that someone else could benefit and use.
The information is not AS READILY available as when you want to purchase.
There is definitely a gigantic imbalance I see.
There is so much hype about the building of a new product, with all the marketing, first day sales etc.
But the phasing out of old products with proper burial (which in this case might mean, the dismantling and salvaging of all of its raw materials, and reusing or returning it to the environmental cycles efficiently) is not done.
Where does all the garbage go?
It is not recycled and put back to its right place.
There is a right place for everything.
Like even poop forms great manure for trees/plants etc.
So as a result of this, we have an endless accumulation of the garbage created by old products.
Who is going to do the cleanup?
The responsibility is on us, it is our willful ignorance and denial of the reality of death that is the root cause here.
We emphasize creation, but not the efficient passing on of the stuff we have gathered to the next generation, or the proper recycling of stuff back into the environment.
Deep inside, there is a denial of the reality of death, which manifests as a feeling that we will live forever. We never even CONSIDER the reality of our own death.
Only if we did that, would we put effort into the correct recycling of our possessions (RE-CYCLING is the key word, life and death is a cycle, and nature has its own cycles. Ideally we should study these cycles and work in harmony with them.)
This is a collective problem and also an individual problem, as I see it.
There are many other smaller instances of this pattern.
Most of us forward bend far more than backward bend in our lifestyles.
We focus on what to eat and treat it like a ceremony and ritual, but when it comes to poop, we want to get done with it with as little consciousness as possible.
We emphasize work/achievement/building but sideline aspects like relaxation/rest/deconstructing (or we do those things only to get back to our prime focus of work and use it instrumentally).
Death has not been integrated into Life.
We repress anything to do with death and handle it in a kind of desperate uneasy way, we shield the reality of this as much as we can and when it happens it carries the context of: “What an unexpected tragedy, this should not have happened, this is unfair and sudden, but I will have to do whatever I can to manage this (said despondently)”.
Why should this be the case?
Why is the collective repressing the reality of death?
That I feel is the true elephant in the room that is being repressed.
We all play/act and pretend like it does not exist and we have an implicit agreement to never speak or discuss it unless really needed and only to the extent required.
This collective repression and denial of the reality of death has consequences throughout the ways in which we live our lives.
Every aspect of our lifestyle carries this feature too.
Marriage/new relationships are celebrated, while breakups are looked down upon, like “There must be a mistake, this is really wrong, should not happen etc.”.
Even the word breakup carries such a violent unceremonious negative connotation.
How can creativity flow freely if things once acquired are simply frozen?
Both the processes of acquisition and dissolution are like 2 wings of the bird of freedom/change/creative flow.
We are actually stifling the movement of life by denying the reality of death, because they both need each other for the higher purpose which is flow, expression, and creation.
There is a similar situation with consumer products.
It is so easy to purchase products now with the whole global e-commerce now booming in the online sphere.
But it is at least 10 times more difficult to find information and sell what you already possess. It is even difficult to find useful ways to pass on what you have even free of cost in a way that someone else could benefit and use.
The information is not AS READILY available as when you want to purchase.
There is definitely a gigantic imbalance I see.
There is so much hype about the building of a new product, with all the marketing, first day sales etc.
But the phasing out of old products with proper burial (which in this case might mean, the dismantling and salvaging of all of its raw materials, and reusing or returning it to the environmental cycles efficiently) is not done.
Where does all the garbage go?
It is not recycled and put back to its right place.
There is a right place for everything.
Like even poop forms great manure for trees/plants etc.
So as a result of this, we have an endless accumulation of the garbage created by old products.
Who is going to do the cleanup?
The responsibility is on us, it is our willful ignorance and denial of the reality of death that is the root cause here.
We emphasize creation, but not the efficient passing on of the stuff we have gathered to the next generation, or the proper recycling of stuff back into the environment.
Deep inside, there is a denial of the reality of death, which manifests as a feeling that we will live forever. We never even CONSIDER the reality of our own death.
Only if we did that, would we put effort into the correct recycling of our possessions (RE-CYCLING is the key word, life and death is a cycle, and nature has its own cycles. Ideally we should study these cycles and work in harmony with them.)
This is a collective problem and also an individual problem, as I see it.
There are many other smaller instances of this pattern.
Most of us forward bend far more than backward bend in our lifestyles.
We focus on what to eat and treat it like a ceremony and ritual, but when it comes to poop, we want to get done with it with as little consciousness as possible.
We emphasize work/achievement/building but sideline aspects like relaxation/rest/deconstructing (or we do those things only to get back to our prime focus of work and use it instrumentally).
Journey to the Abstract 