Sunday, August 25, 2013

The Impossible Question

While most people accept that life is change, very few regard that changes can be for the better -- instead of the inevitable worse -- and if they did, then there wouldn't be so much resistance to change, so much fear, anxiety and trepidation.

But we are conditioned to believe that change even for the better, must be at least painful and arduous -- rather than alleviating and ultimately eliminating the pain, and being easier instead of more difficult and complicated.

However, that is not a necessary component of change -- but the price the controlling few think to exact, in order to let the uninitiated into the promised land.  That is the kind of hazing that takes place in every society, to keep the few (elite), the few -- because if everyone could have it so good and easy, what merit could they have over the others?

That is not essential to change -- but rather the rearguard action of those who will soon be last in the coming societal upheaval and transformation.  The vanguard of society, has already moved on -- in creating the new  and not just repeating the old -- as though those incantations, can prevent that progress and evolution to the unrelenting better.

That is the very nature and movement of life -- to seek the better.  All forms of life do that -- because it is in its best interests to do so, and that which is not successful, will perish -- to make way for the successful.  That is what one needs to understand about life -- that if one isn't getting better, than one is getting worse, and even hoping to stay the same, is getting worse, because all of life is improving -- whether one wants to or not.

If one is constantly adapting, re-creating oneself to the challenges of each new moment and time, then one is always at their best -- until one day they are gone -- but not deteriorating for half their lifetime, as many in contemporary life presently experience -- along with so much fear and trepidation.  But if they can continue to keep growing throughout life, then there is no dying and deterioration but only actualization and fulfillment of all the days of their being -- which is living in the eternity of each moment.

And that is the promised land and not only a life in the hereafter -- where supposedly, one gets to live that life in another.  If this life is only a preparation for the next, then there is no better preparation than living that life in the present one.

That is entirely possible -- to do directly and presently -- what one thinks they have to do the opposite to achieve -- because of a societal conditioning, to make everything difficult and complex -- or how could the few (elite), remain above all the others?  So we need competitions to ensure that there will only be one winner -- and all the others, losers -- because that's how we are conditioned to think necessary, so that there isn't a level playing field.  Some must be worse -- even if we have to create a way for them to be so.

So one asks, "Is it possible for everyone to get better -- and how is that possible?"

Friday, August 16, 2013

Dysfunction, Ill Health, Old Age

There is a tendency to blur the distinction between these three distinct phenomena -- of dysfunctionill healthold age -- and how they are related to one another, and unless one is clear that they are not one and the same, just asdiscrimination is the antidote for prejudice -- and not thecause of prejudice, as the mass media manipulatorswould have us believe.

From that confusion, they can have us believing everything they want us to believe -- since we now think up is down, black is white, left is right, right is wrong, and the effect is the cause of anything -- rather than its logical outcome.  Thus, many believe they are in ill health because they are old -- rather than in ill health -- caused by their dysfunction, or bad choices and behaviors.  Instead, they would rather believe that because they are "old," they have to make these bad choices  -- rather than accept that their ill health, is because of these bad choices -- and not the result of just living longer.

Then they surround themselves with all those who will support them in their thinking that they are helpless and need increasingly more assistance and caregiving from those whose livelihoods are based on such self-abnegating beliefs -- that they simply must get worse, no matter what they do -- but there are "professionals" available all along the way to "aid" them to their ultimate demise and abject end.

And then there is the other half of the population who believe that their lives can get better -- as long as they have something to say and do about it -- who can sometimes be overzealous in their belief and affirmations that "anything is possible, -- for certainly, everything is not, and one is equally in error thinking so.  But rather than take one extreme (erroneous)  view over the other, one is best testing what is true, and what is not, rather than just choosing the beliefs they want to, because that is what suits their purposes and aspirations.

So one asks, can one begin any inquiry and undertaking, without any preconceived beliefs and presumptions -- but rather, proceed to find out the truth of the matter -- not according to what one group of experts says it is -- but actually discovering the truth of that matter in one's own life, because that is what is relevant and significant, because nothing works for everybody, or doesn't work for everybody -- and we have to find out, which we are.

The mass media manipulators would have us believe that there is only one way -- and they are in charge of it -- and have been, ever since their predecessors took their commandment from Moses himself, and that's how they came upon their authority.  But authority is not the same as the actual truth of the matter -- which is always open to dispute, and a better understanding -- despite those who claim to be exclusively in charge of such matters.

The scientific method has always been an open challenge from anyone interested in presenting a better understanding and explanation -- particularly when the present one, merely legitimizes and perpetuates the problem as unsolvable to the end of time.  Certainly before then, if not in short order, somebody will come along with new insight, that eliminates that problem entirely -- because they understand it rightly, and better.

And that is how things come to get better -- and not stay the same forever, or as some experts believe, that the truth was perfected thousands of years ago, and have only gotten worse since then -- and so the superiority of their understanding, is that it hasn't changed for the last thousands of years -- depsite the fact that everything has changed since then.  But to such people, nothing is related to everything else -- and each fragment of their "understanding," exists in a world unrelated to any other -- so that any claim to cause and effect is impossible -- and that's why they are the "experts."

Wednesday, August 07, 2013

What Are People Doing Wrong?

Many people say they want to change, but everything they do, reinforces the way they are -- and so they remain so.

Nowhere is that more true than it is when people say they want to lose weight -- while maintaining that their favorite pastime is eating.  That is the obvious problem.  One has to develop another pastime besides eating -- and not simply exercising so that one can eat more. 

Even when they do go to gyms to workout -- they choose a style of working out, that allows them as much inactivity as possible -- which is to choose an overheavy weight, perform five repetitions of that movement, and then take the next ten minutes to recover for their next set.  In the meantime, they are commiseerating with others of the same problem, that it is very hard to lose weight -- even exercising, but it sure has worked up an appetite, that they now feel fully justified in indulging.

Their entire lives is one of indulgences -- and that becomes the way they are, quite visibly and palpably. There just can be no other way -- but the truth, of how they live.  So when they go to the doctors, as they frequently must do, there's a whole litany of ailments -- caused by the way they live, and everything they do, and do not do -- that cannot be hidden or erased.  That truth is manifest -- and not what one would simply like it to be, in spite of everything they do -- that makes it so.

One has merely conditioned oneself to that denial of reality -- and what is -- and no amount of wishful-thinking, will make it otherwise.  The task, is to align the reality with what one would like to believe, until they are one and the same, and not fragments of every half-truth one wishes to believe.  The result then, is an integrated human being living in that one reality -- and not the many fragmented ones that is the reason for their mental illness and disintegration, decline and demise.

A life in increasing integration -- which means oneness, is a life getting stronger, more efficient and purposeful, while that which disintegrates, is losing its cohesiveness and sense of direction, to become better as a result of knowing its purpose for being and doing, and not increasing its randomness of activities and behaviors that overwhelm those sensibilities.

Death and dying, doesn't just happen -- but are the result of one's behaviors, as much as those designs and desires that foster growth and vitality.  So just doing anything -- in any ol' way -- will not be sufficient, to attain the precise outcomes one hopes to achieve by practice -- of doing the right things.  And how does one know that? The results are usually obvious -- and have been for millions of years of evolution, that there is a reason it has to be this way -- and not to be aligned with that reality, makes extinction imminent.

One still has to be the best one can be -- despite the welfare and Social Security, that says we don't have to be, as all the margin of safety we need.  For life surely, at that level, is guaranteed at the minimum, and not the maximum of what it can be -- beginning with one's baseline health and functioning.  That is mental as well as physical -- and beyond that, firing on all cyclinders as a complete and fully-developed individual -- which means to be indivisible, and unfragmented in every way -- so as to be a total human being.

And that is what is now possible, in an age of affluence -- instead of just eating and consuming more -- because that is now possible too.  But those were the solutions for an earlier time -- and regressing to the caveman, is not the extent of human progress, and its highest form and achievement.  

The thoughtful and creative people of any time, are focused on the frontiers of these developments and different possibilities -- and not just a return to the good ol' days, when life was brutal, short and nasty -- as the ideal of how it should be.  And that is why history and patterns repeat themselves -- in thinking there cannot be a liberation from this past, and chain of suffering and torment.  But it means having the insight to see that possibility -- and not just accept the fate everybody around them says they must.

That is a huge part of the aging dilemma -- as people don't know how to live their lives beyond the brutal, short and nasty -- but to assume and accept that fate, because they cannot imagine and create any other -- because nobody taught them how.  That is what they had to teach themselves.  That -- is the meaning and purpose of their life.