The World As I See It

As I was falling asleep on Monday night I was thinking of Einstein’s The World As I See It and the words below are what came to me.

I haven’t actually read the book yet, but just thinking about the title was enough to get me thinking about how I view the world.

It is a sad thing to live in a world where destruction, famine and poverty are prominent. It is sad this world has taken on the persona of a war mongering entity. Men have become enslaved to a system that values the material, the tangible, and that which is not permanent and in a constant state of flux.

Humans have become enslaved to false ideas of their needs. They have become slaves to their desires, desires which existentially do not exist.

I believe we are nothing. I believe it in the sense that how can we be something if we don’t know what that something is? How can we know ourselves? We cannot observe ourselves as we think we are. We can only observe ourselves in others. I believe we are all one consciousness, one awareness and so each person we meet is just another version of ourselves. We only perceive ourselves in the form of other people.

If you’re finding this idea a little hard to grasp here’s the link to an excellent short story called The Egg by Andy Weir that outlines it beautifully.

In nothingness everything is born, everything exists. It is the space of nothingness that creates everything. From nothingness imagination has a blank canvas; a tabula rasa to tell a story and to form a reality based on our perceived beliefs of our story. It’s from this nothingness that we have the power to define our reality.

Alan Watts states that a knife cannot cut itself, so based on that idea how can we know ourselves? We cannot see ourselves with our own eyes. Yes we see ourselves in the mirror, but this is only a reflection. The reflection in turn is but a perception of how we view ourselves. It’s not the real us. How can it be?

As Alan Watts says: “This is nothing, this is a dream. Because you’re really nothing. But this is the most incredible nothing. Nothingness is like the nothingness of space, which contains all the suns, the stars, the mountains, the rivers etc. Are all contained in void. So out of this void comes everything and you’re it.”

In short, Watts is saying we’re bigger and better than we perceive we are. We are the universe.

In identifying so strongly with the physical we end up losing any integrity we were born with. There a perceived lack of meaning in life is suffered because we end up desiring too much of that which has no real sustenance for our soul, for our real self because we don’t realise the immense power of the nothingness that we are.

We’re becoming robots working endlessly to create items that destroy our inner peace and the natural world. Society has created an attachment to objects that keep us chained to the belief that we are human, and human alone, and that life is all about collecting material goods. It has fabricated the spiritual universe for the promotion of the tangible universe.

When someone dies do they take these goods that they’ve spent their whole life working for with them? Of course not.

You won’t take yours with you either.

Are you really working towards or for something that is truly beneficial for your soul?

What are you really working for?

We have a world built on the ego’s impermanent desires. They are only temporary. We take only our actions and attitudes with us when we pass. Nothing physical. This is what Buddhist mean when they say that we must transcend and overcome the attachment to our desires to become truly free. Like a wisp of wind we rise out of the physical and become awareness. We become pure creation.

That which is true does not change. On a soul level we are pure consciousness, pure love, and pure awareness. This does not change. At our core, this is us. Our physical body is just who are in this lifetime. This is why we shouldn’t identify with the physical and why we should aim to transcend into the spiritual awareness we are. We inhabit these bodies because they are vehicles for our spiritual growth, our spiritual evolution. They give form to life so we can experience life. We need this to learn.

When did we become witless fools, suffering and pandering to an invisible enemy? When did we become our own enemy? When did we allow the ego to take over? Anything that does not promote love or pure goodness is the ego. When we have a negative, destructive thought about anyone – including ourselves, that is the ego making itself known to try and distract us from who we really are.

I find it a ridiculous notion that men fight for peace. You don’t fight for peace, you just become peaceful and radiate peacefulness throughout your life and in your actions. For example, people fight for slavery to end. Why not stand for freedom? By choosing to fight for the end of something you’re still enslaving yourself to a system that knows how to manipulate your desire for peace and turn it into a financially profitable business, thus turning your desired peace into violence. Your desire to end something becomes so strong that you start using force to direct your will, and all your attention becomes focused on it, and all you do is push it away. How can you expect to stand for something that you yourself have not yet achieved? Once you achieve an internal freedom and choose to end the slavery to your ego then you are helping to contribute to the end of the ego for everyone – remember: you are everyone.  Your freedom ripples out into the universe and affects people and the world in ways you can’t comprehend.

Why even fight at all?

What does fighting actually achieve besides destruction and a fulfilment of some fanatical desire to ‘make the world a better place’ by persuading people to agree with, and accept biased views? Fighting amongst ourselves is slavery. Whose ends are we really meeting?

I see it that we are here to love and that forgiveness is the way towards that love and to setting ourselves free from the binding of the ego. Some call this enlightenment, others may call it awareness or awakening. Whatever name it’s given, it’s the same idea. We are here as a physical representation of love and to learn how to love through all sorts of adverse situations and to realise what strength we have as eternal spiritual beings. Through forgiving ourselves and others for hurtful actions, we release the negativity that weighs us down and progress into the more loving existence that we are.

Be happy. Be you.