I am re-reading one of my favorite fiction books, Reamde by Neal Stephenson.
The book is slower than it was the first time. I saw only about 5% of it for the first time… But who I am and what I can see have changed subtly… I have two distinctions that I didn’t have when I first read it. I’ll share those two distinctions.
There are two characters in the book that manifest those two distinctions, Zula and Sokolov.
Honoring the timeless, what will never change… is one of the distinctions, and spending no, or only little time thinking of themselves.
Now, why these characters in a novel are worth reading is this: the normal person is not like them. They are someone to model after.
Without models, you and humanity are stuck in the ugliness we live in. If you can’t see the ugliness, then please leave now… You are part of the ugliness.
But what isn’t said, maybe anywhere, is that “The What” to model isn’t in the visible. The timeless…
You keep staring at the visible, in my work, in movies, in books, on Facebook, and you don’t understand that there is nothing inspiring, there is nothing spiritual, there is nothing worth looking at in the visible.
Especially if you said that you wanted to get a clue to a life worth living.
And describing what you don’t see is futile: what you cannot see your cannot see.
Last night I had to do serious jujitsu on my mind to let me go to sleep.
I read one of my students’ post on the Reclaim forum, and got re-activated… seriously.
When you live the opposite of Zula and Sokolov, when what is important to you is the right now, and how you look to yourself and the other, I want to give up on you. I want to go HOME… leave this miserable, ugly place behind.
You know, whether you are conscious of it or not, you are ugly. Your live is ugly. Your intentions are ugly. Your thoughts are ugly. Your relationships are ugly.
The curse of being me is that I can see the ugly. And my job is to shed light where I can.
Hold up a mirror to a blind person and hope that they will see.
It’s not working.
One day they seem to be seeing, the next they don’t.
They look at what they want, the result, and start lying, cheating, and lose all the gains they achieved.
My job, personally, if I want to continue to be there and keep on distinguishing more and more of the invisible, is to catch myself thinking that producing result with you is my job.
The moment I do, the moment I think that what YOU do is a reflection of what I do, I accidentally get pulled into the “how much I think of myself” high numbers, and it is all about me.
Like now.
What you do is what you do. The result is the result. It has nothing to do with me. You crunch on pearls, and that doesn’t make them not pearls.
It is very seductive to think that your behavior is, in any way, related to what I do, or the value I provide.
Of course if reality responded to every move as it is “supposed to”, if reality were a machine, You would be a good little soldier doing what you are “supposed to” do.
But reality is, your efforts are, most of the time, pissing in the wind. You end up with wet pants…
If you can make it OK, you can be on your way to effectively model your life after Zula or Sokolov… and start your journey to become an Expanding Human Being.
If you can’t or don’t make it OK… then you go on the cheating/lying route, and your vibrational number is falling.
That is how it works. Can change a hundred times a day… And it is all 100% up to you.
OK, I know, I know, I promised to elaborate on the distinctions.
And I also know that it is a waste of time, but for my own sake, I’ll do it.
Principle #1: Keep your eyes on the timeless.
The value that will be value hundred years from now, and was a value thousands of years ago. Life. Freedom. Courage. Bending with life. Knowing when. Talking only when you must. Observing. Noticing. Health. Sleeping. Staying fit. Eating and drinking so you can live for another day.
If you look at your life, in the “chasing mirages” life you have, you choose titillation, exciting, being right, looking good, feeling good, entertaining, interesting, etc. at the expense of the timeless. 99.99% of the time.
Your results are nothing to write home about… sporadic and not lasting.
Nothing is fast enough for you so you use your imagination… and call that reality. You lie, and call that reality. You cheat and call that reality.
Principle #2: It’s not personal
In the Starting Point Measurements there is this crucial measure: 11. To what degree you think of yourself.
You can look at life and filter everything through yourself. How it effects you, how it makes you look, how YOU see it, what you think about it. This is the way to get a high percentage number on this measure.
Wretched.
Reality is independent of you. And unless you see it as independent, your actions will be misdirected, and you’ll remain stupid, poor, sick, and unfulfilled.
Spiritual teachers over thousands of years are trying to teach you to look at a rose and have nothing between you and a rose… not even the word. Or a sunset.
And these spiritual teachers, of course, are failing to make any difference. Because if you have a high number for “To what degree you think of yourself?”, then you simply can’t. You can’t connect to a rose, you can’t connect to a sunset, you cannot connect to a person without putting yourself in the middle.
And you can’t see. You can only see yourself. Not the rose, not the sunset, not the other person, and not the business opportunity, the health situation, the water you are trying to energize, the politician, or the weather.
Before I came to live in Syracuse, NY, I had a client whose claim to fame was the way he talked about snow. He said “snoooow”.
The way you say the words tells almost everything about you… To what degree you think of yourself when you look at things. And it also tells me, approximately, without measuring, how many words you can use accurately.
Accurate means: it is not personal. It means the same, across the board, regardless of education, gender, political affiliation, or nationality.
Nowadays, surprisingly, I get people to ask for their measurements, who score 200 on that scale… or 700.
The one with the 700 can have a lot more success in life than the one with the 200.
And if you look carefully, the difference is: To what degree you think of yourself.
How many things you can see without putting yourself and your opinion, what you want, what you think, in the middle.
When you can’t speak of things without having narrate it, have an interpretation, an opinion about something, I can tell, without measuring, that your vibration is about 120. Low. Wretched. Like the rest of humanity. ((
Sam Harris Quotes
World, Way, Facts
The only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts. Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us.
World, Way, Facts
The habit of spending nearly every waking moment lost in thought leaves us at the mercy of whatever our thoughts happen to be. Meditation is a way of breaking this spell.
Meditation, Mindfulness, Way
Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?
Loss, Suffering, Family And Friends
The problem with religion, because it’s been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation.
Believe, People, Religion
Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, and avoid others, like loneliness. We eat specific foods to enjoy their fleeting presence on our tongues. We read for the pleasure of thinking another person’s thoughts.
Loneliness, Thinking, Like Love
Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral – that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings. This explains why Christians like yourself expend more “moral” energy opposing abortion than fighting genocide. It explains why you are more concerned about human embryos than about the lifesaving promise of stem-cell research. And it explains why you can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from AIDS there each year. (25)
<!– (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated
Christian, Fighting, Cells
Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom are among the least religious societies on earth. According to the United Nations’ Human Development Report (2005), they are also the healthiest, as indicated by life expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income, educational attainment, gender equality, homicide rate, and infant mortality. . . . Conversely, the fifty nations now ranked lowest in terms of the United Nations’ human development index are unwaveringly religious.
<!– (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated
Religious, Educational, Australia
While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers. Anyone caught worshipping Poseidon, even at sea, will be thought insane.
<!– (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated
Atheist, Believe, Sea
Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything — anything — be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in.
Atheist, Stars, War
If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide that proves they should value evidence. If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument would you invoke to prove they should value logic?
Logical Arguments, Should, Evidence
You don’t get anything worth getting, by pretending to know things you don’t know.
Pretending, Knows
Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn’t care to, or he doesn’t exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.
Evil, Care, Choose Wisely
In fact, “atheism” is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a “non-astrologer” or a “non-alchemist.” We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.
Religious, Atheist, People
You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.
<!– (2012). “Free Will”, p.38, Simon and Schuster
Free Will, Can Do
The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn’t, we will kill you.
Community, Islam, Faces
A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.
Long, Puppets, Strings
The problem is not that religious people are stupid. It’s not that religious fundamentalists are stupid. I happen to think that you can be so well educated that you can build a nuclear bomb, and still get–and still believe that you will get the 72 virgins in paradise–that is the problem. The problem is that–religion–because it has been sheltered from criticism as it has been–allows people–perfectly sane, perfectly intelligent people–to believe en masse, what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation.
Religious, Stupid, Believe
The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero-sum. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science.
Religious, Zero, Maintenance
How we pay attention to the present moment…determin es the character of our experience and…the quality of our lives.
Character, Quality, Pay
It is time we recognized that belief is not a private matter; it has never been merely private. In fact, beliefs are scarcely more private than actions are, for every belief is a fount of action in potential.
Matter, Facts, Belief
Jesus Christ—who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavens—can now be eaten in the form of a cracker
Jesus, Rose, Heaven
Rather than bring the full force of our creativity and rationality to bear on the problems of ethics, social cohesion, and even spiritual experience, moderates merely ask that we relax our standard of adherence to ancient superstitions and taboos, while otherwise maintaining a belief system that was passed down to us from men and women whose lives were simply ravaged by their basic ignorance about the world.
Spiritual, Creativity, Ignorance
We do not know what awaits each of us after death, but we know that we will die. Clearly, it must be possible to live ethically-with a genuine concern for the happiness of other sentient beings-without presuming to know things about which we are patently ignorant. Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person you will pass in the street today, is going to die. Living long enough, each will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?
Death, Loss, Genuine Concern
Values reduce to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.
Facts, Conscious, Well Being
We are now in the 21st century: all books, including the Koran, should be fair game for flushing down the toilet without fear of violent reprisal.
))
Read the original article: The timeless is invisible to you… your actions are for the immediate and cheap