DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
INVISIBLE GURU FORUM
HTML https://jedmckenna.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Truth Realization
*****************************************************
#Post#: 42148--------------------------------------------------
About the
By: Jed McKenna Date: August 16, 2020, 3:49 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Dear Forum Member:
Respectfully submitted for your consideration.
I trust by now that many students have reviewed the written or
audio version of the Ashtavakra Gita. I wouldn’t be arrogant
enough to think I could submit anything better or more poetic.
However, I would like to submit something in a modern context in
an effort to make what has been pointed to a little more real.
Not that it needs to be or could be made more real than it
already is. It’s all that is real, the REAL YOU.
Let’s see how this works. You are reading this from some kind of
LCD display, so we will work with what you have in front of you.
What are some of the qualities of your display? Nothing
appearing on the screen changes the screen, it’s always
functioning as a display and that is its sole (and soul)
purpose. It doesn’t get involved in changing the picture. Its
there to present a story line to you through pictures and
sounds.
All LCDs need a ‘feed’ which comes from some complicated and
obscure combination of transistors, resisters and capacitors. To
most of us, this is pretty mysterious, so let’s call it ‘The
Mystery’.
While the screen is filled with action and characters, it
doesn’t jump up and down on your table. It remains completely
still and unchanged, only images appear to move. This is an
important point. It is the display that is real and not what
arises on it. Nothing on the screen is real, nothing at all.
There is only one screen in all of this universe (the One
Screen). In the case of humans, it displays human scenes while
in a butterfly, it displays butterfly scenes.
Humans are only concerned with what arises on the screen. Loves
and hates, tastes, like and dislikes, judgement, struggles,
successes. and all of those are additional illusions and
distortions added by ego/Maya/personality. While absorbing and
entertaining, that doesn’t change the fact that they are
illusory. You can know this because all of them have a beginning
and an end, they are continually changing. The screen itself is
always there and dispassionately displaying whatever calls to be
displayed… i.e. whatever signal arises from The Mystery.
Remember, a picture is just a picture. In and of itself it has
no ‘qualities’ and is beyond any concept such as ‘good’ or
‘bad’. Ego/Maya/personality do that job and do it pervasively.
An enlightened one never pays unnecessary heed to what is on the
One Screen, because he or she realize the transient nature of
pictures and sound. The unenlightened take the pictures and
sound to be the real things. This is as foolish as modelling
your life on a soap-opera.How can
it matter what arises on a screen? How can a picture or sound
be important? Can anything on a screen be better than anything
else? Granted some arisings might appear be more fun, more
seductive or more beautiful than others… but can any arising be
more real than another? Is any picture anything ‘more’ than any
other picture?
Maya/ego/personality is the discriminator, the one that tells
you something is better than something else, but the catch is
that this discriminator is only another illusion, another
picture arising on the One Screen. It’s there to give you a
sense of control over what arises, and that too is illusion.
Your True Nature is that of the LCD but you are caught up on
what the screen displays. How can that be anything more than
illusion? Through the hypnotic effectiveness of those pictures
there has arisen in the human a kind of filter or sub-routine
called ego/Maya/personality.
The life you think you are living, with all its drama, is just
that, drama. Nothing arising on the screen is the screen itself,
which is the REAL YOU, it’s just an experience.
Knowing/realizing that it’s all only continually changing images
arising on this One Screen is liberation from the yoke of
illusions.
O.K., so what is the human body for? The human body is also an
arising on the screen. Its purpose is that of an interface. It
facilitates and interprets the arisings on the One Screen. A
human interface, using its brain, interprets through the
spectrum and qualities of humanness. Likewise, a butterfly
interprets the screen, but through the spectrum and qualities of
butterflyness. Remember, there is only One Screen, but almost
infinite interpretations. One substantial difference is the
human has the unique capacity to realize what is going on and
thus wake up. The human has the ‘self-awareness’ or ‘awareness
of awareness’ capacity, lacking in almost all other animals. I
suspect some large sea creatures and mammals might possess it as
well, but that’s just my hallucination.
Imagine two different people watch the same movie on the same
screen. They come away with one saying ‘Wow, I really enjoyed
blah, blah.’ while the other says, ‘No, no, you missed the whole
point of the show’. The show itself was the same for each
person, but their ego/Maya/personalities, through their brains,
led them to different interpretations of what was going on. In
this process, ego/Maya/personality has very cleverly lead them
both away from the real point of it all, that they were both
watching the same One Screen. Any good show is going to draw you
in. That’s the purpose of a show. But, from the perspective of
the screen, nothing is different from anything else. Pictures
arising on the screen of awareness will always be illusions and
the only real unchanging things is the One Screen.
Don’t we all like a good movie, one that grabs our attention and
seduces us into losing sight that it’s just a movie? Good
entertain is… well, good, but it would be delusional to think it
was real. Watching the One Screen, it is easy to perceive motion
but motion never actually happens. The One Screen never moves.
All movement happens in the human brain, never on the screen.
So we have The Mystery sending a signal which is displayed on
the One Screen. Ego/Maya/personality then take the story, and
based on memories and various personal interpretations. We, as
final observer, get a story of a story, in other words, a
distortion of a distortion. At the same time, we wonder why we
are confused and miserable. Humans lead lives of quiet
desperation and lie to themselves pretty much all the time. Your
brain is the source of all movement, and it doesn’t exist. Just
another arising on the screen. At the level of the One Screen,
nothing ever happened, so, what’s all the (human) excitement
about?
Alright Mr. Smarty-pants Jed… what is one to do?
At the level of One Screen there is absolutely nothing you can
do, it has been there for an eternity and will continue for an
eternity. It is never changing, infinitely big, lucid and
transparent beyond anything, invisible and indivisible… and,
it’s the Real You. Ahh.. but don’t give up, because you as human
can do something. You can start looking in the right place.
You can unhook yourself from the illusion by looking inward.
Seek what all ‘this’ arises on. The Real You is not the
personality, not the body, not even the ‘soul’. The real you is
that on which this whole universe has arisen. For the time
being, I’ll stick with calling it the One Screen, but that will
probably change after I have lunch… just the way the human side
of me works. Today’s prime directive, seek the Once Screen and
comment as you see fit.
Be well.... Love ya, Jed.
#Post#: 42158--------------------------------------------------
Re: About the
By: Kathryn Date: August 16, 2020, 8:01 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Being a screen seems rather dull. Like who desires to be the
back of a cave? I’d prefer to at least be the fire necessary for
the pictures to show up.
#Post#: 42160--------------------------------------------------
Re: About the
By: Jed McKenna Date: August 17, 2020, 1:05 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Thank you Kathryn:
Yes, I understand what you are saying. Now, look closely at your
words. You mention 'desires', and yes, who desires to be in the
back of the cave. However, be aware that desire leads to drama
and drama, in the end, always leads to pain. Set up followed by
upset... upset followed by set up... that, while 'interesting',
certainly wears one out in the final analysis. When will you get
bored of the drama and seek what is, instead of what appears to
be. Eventually peace will win out, eventually.
Love ya, Jed.
#Post#: 42185--------------------------------------------------
Re: About the
By: Kathryn Date: August 18, 2020, 12:44 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
So without desire, there is nothing. So how did anything
(illusion) manifest?
#Post#: 42201--------------------------------------------------
Re: About the
By: Jed McKenna Date: August 19, 2020, 6:19 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Desire is the creator of this illusion, the human dream. It
arises spontaneously out of The Mystery, probably just cause she
got a little bored.
Love ya, Jed.
P.S. does this mean that boredom is really the source of all we
perceive...hmmm.....
*****************************************************