Friday, July 01, 2005

The Biggest Secret is The Reactive Mind.

Some portion of us are engaged in trying to understand what is going on and our place in the scheme of it. From observation we can say that this number is a minority in respect of the actual population on Earth plane. It gets amusing when you watch all the people running around doing things without thinking and then look for the people who are watching them and thinking about this. Odd questions emerge when you see powerful, educated groups of individuals dedicated to the deception of others and celebrated for it.

The more closely one watches the process of human life around them the more certainly it appears insane. Initially we are confused because the repetition of patterns gives a sense of order and balance to the process. When people behave in a uniform and repetitive way it can suggest reasonable and conscious awareness of intent and movement.

From above LA the sight of tens of thousands of cars approaching and leaving the city give a suggestion of balanced reality to the whole affair; an endlessly recurring snake dance. Down on the ground are cars that travel for two hours or more every day just so the occupants can live in the place they are commuting from. The air is poisonous and getting more so. The landscape is unstable; at any moment there may be fires, landslides, earthquakes or riots. Meanwhile, surgically enhanced humanoids elevate the trivial to the status of a God while in a temporary state of being moving toward dissolution.

An extremely strange but seldom witnessed phenomenon is the similarity in thought that moves in the minds of most people. Even stranger is the idea that they actually possess a mind apart from the mind they move in. Another interesting feature is the demarcation between predator and prey in the human colony. In nature we are aware of the wolf and the deer, the lion and the zebra. In the human estate we often do not make this connection.

The news of the day is selected by the people who present it to a specific end. It is not, as some may think, to inform you of events. What it is, is to present events and then shape the perception of them according to the requirements of those who caused the events or... to present events for collective praise or censure and thereby to give a common morality to things. This is laudable; this is not and so forth; a formula for crowd control.

Day follows night follows day. At some point the individual looks back and wonders how it is that their life passed by. Where were they while it occurred? Did it happen the way they remembered it? Why did it go the way it did? There it goes...

As age settles in we find that we have become chronic repeaters of patterns and that any original thinking or new perspectives have become impossible. For most it is a tight cycle of meals and false memories surrounded by television. In a large part this is supplemented by alcohol, drugs or religion. The thing promised from the alcohol and drugs is no more real than that promised by the religion. Each of them occupy the mind, none of them are understood. Of course the thing hidden beneath the folds of the robe of religion is real but it cannot be seen if the robe itself is taking up the attention.

It is to be assumed that as ones health fails that ones faculties are dimmed as well. It is to be assumed as ones range of motion decreases that ones openness to new possibilities is constricted as well. Eventually one has curled into a fetal ball similar to the one they arrived in. The cycle completes. Certainly senility mimics childhood.

Now the same things have been repeating since long before they began to record them and way, way back in the others times when they recorded things that are now dust and cannot be read except upon the ethers, they repeated these things; sex and death and war and peace, rich and poor and strong and weak, black and white and shades of gray, here I come move out the way. And yet, there it goes; there it goes, on and on, “big wheel keep on turning.” “Same as it ever was.” “There is nothing new under the sun.” ...and there it goes...

Scientology has got one thing right. However, in order to build itself up into a powerful organization that controls large amounts of money and lives it has to have an intricate nonsense tapestry; like the Catholic Church. The power and truth of Christ is the simple and profound force of Love but to be this enormous institution it has to have a crushing collection of irrelevant minutiae. The thing that Scientology has right is its understanding of The Reactive Mind. Everything that happens to us is the result of our Reactive Mind.

Our capacity for peace or confusion, our state of peace or confusion is determined by our Reactive Mind. Our hopes and dreams, our fears and illusions all exist as a result of our control or lack of control of our Reactive Mind. Controlling our Reactive Mind is how we; become ‘clear’, how we become enlightened, how we come into contact with that which exists everywhere, in and around our relationship to our Reactive Mind.

The Devil communicates with and annoys us through our reactive mind. We go to war and to prison; to the hospital and the graveyard, in and out of love, into the wedding ceremony and the divorce court riding in the carriage of the Reactive Mind. God hides behind the confusion of the Reactive Mind. All the answers to every eternal question lie outside the Reactive Mind. Everything within the scope of the Reactive Mind takes place in the realm of time in the world of phenomena and it goes on and on and on.

Your life went by because of the Reactive Mind. You don’t know what happened to you because of the Reactive Mind. You don’t know who you are because of the Reactive Mind. Stilling the Reactive Mind, gaining the capacity not to react is the big secret in terms of life’s deepest meaning and the route by which one come to understand and acquire their hearts longing.

The whole magic of the surrounding world and its impact on the senses is the result of the Reactive Mind. Though there are billions of people here, there are only a few actual divisions of personality. For reasons of simplicity let’s say 36. We can further complicate that by; conditioning and sex, language and country, color and creed.

If you want enlightenment you have only to control the Reactive Mind. In fact, no matter what you want, good or bad, that is the thing. Some manipulate this Reactive Mind in order to force geo-political and economic change in the wider world. Some watch it relentlessly until it sinks below the horizon and the great Sun of the spiritual world is allowed to dawn upon the consciousness. Everything you do has a relationship to the Reactive Mind. If you make it stronger you increase the tensile strength of your prison bars. If you weaken it, the more ductile it becomes. Is your world hard or soft? Are you hard or soft?

Reading this you engage the Reactive Mind. Thinking about this you engage the Reactive Mind. Watch yourself. See if this is not true in every moment of your day. See if your very awareness of time and place is not also determined by this. Everything you think and feel and do is the result of your Reactive Mind, unless you don’t have one. Or, if, having one, the clutch that transmits to the driveshaft is burned out and you can see it spinning but it doesn’t connect to anything.

Maybe you don’t have anywhere to go. Maybe all of that; the going, the doing, the thinking and talking, the living and dying is irrelevant to the essential point. Maybe that is what tricks you into the world of suffering and want when there is nothing to suffer for and nothing to want.

We’ll pick up further on this tomorrow or whenever that may be. Meanwhile, I’ll be working on my peripheral vision.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Of course the thing hidden beneath the folds of the robe of religion is real but it cannot be seen if the robe itself is taking up the attention."

The is one of the best (and most quotable) quotes I've ever heard. But of course the whole thing was great, and brimming with Truth as usual. Thanks

ben

Anonymous said...

Xquisite!!! Bang on!

CC

Anonymous said...

It could be that this is your most important work to date.

One of the things I most appreciate about your writing is that you never get involved with the crushing weight of detailing and defining terms and levels and 'degrees comparative'. you avoid the sort of mind deadening cataloguing one sees in the works of Aquinus and Kant and a host of other people who I imagine must have lived dreary and difficult lives.

Everything is very simple here. There may be much that is left out and some that is only suggested but I always feel refreshed as opposed to needing a nap. I especially thank you for that.

z a

Anonymous said...

That was a glorious fine piece of writing. I get the feeling that when I understand that completely my troubles will be over.

P

Braja Rani Devi Dasi said...

the reactive mind. the bottomline. the bottomline of the one religious text i love. i know about it. a lot of my friends know about it. and knowing about it doesn't help. i guess i don't know enough.

Anonymous said...

Too true. You can look right at it happening and be unable to do anything about it. It may be that everything we think about ourselves and others is defined by the reactive mind. Brilliant work Les.

Erin

Anonymous said...

The best of Les - just keeps getting better. "Get-ting bet-ter all the time....geeetting sooo muuuch beeetter all the time... getting better all the time..." (The Beatles) However, I would say (to Erin) that as Les subtly implied, the real point is, that there IS something one "can do about it"....Stop rrreacting... heh heh heh he heh

Anonymous said...

hah hah. Good one. Yeah, "stop reacting" but, and there is always that -but- which may be a reaction too.

Sooner or later some savvy publisher is going to pick up on this site and it it going to turn into a best seller of a book. Items like this one in particular have the potential to change lives on the spot.

I envy Les. He has the full personal assurance that he is not responsible for this so there is never the problem with ego and personality. He just has to step out of the way. That can come in real handy when someone is throwing an awards dinner. No rubber chicken and no wooden people.

Bruce

Anonymous said...

what? What? WHAT?

Anonymous said...

swish...................


nothing but net. You really do keep getting better.

R. Sanchez

Anonymous said...

Sunday morning and it's very early. I'm hoping I can come back later and you will have left something new. I would appreciate something new to think about now more than at other times in recent memory. I'm afraid my reactive mind has been over-reacting of late.

Bradley





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