[...] you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind.

–Morpheus

We can live in our thoughts, we can live our thoughts, we can be our thoughts, caught up in dramas generated by our minds, thinking, analysing, obsessing, re-living, agonizing, shortly: digesting the thought food supplied to us by our brain - that’s the Blue Pill, Virtual Reality, Bondage we were all born into.

Luckily, as creatures equipped with consciousness, we also possess a seemingly hidden from us ability to distance ourselves from our thoughts, ability to allow them to exist without actually us paying too much attention to them, without us acting upon them, without us reacting to them - that’s the Red Pill, Quantum Reality, being the Observer of the Experiment called “life” rather than laboratory animal being experimented on by our very own mind.

The choice is ours but it is important to consider Morpheus’ words here:

I didn’t say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth

–Morpheus

Those words are absolutely critical: many of us bravely decided to take the Red Pill, but in a wrong arrogant belief that it would somehow give us an advantage, improve quality of our lives, enable us to have more control over Virtual Reality we have to deal with every day, free us from the bondage we were born into. What Morpheus is trying to emphasise then, and many of us had a pleasure of painfully learning that lesson themselves, is that taking the Red Pill does not automatically “make things better” - it is often, in fact, that taking the Red Pill makes things seemingly worse, to start with anyway - so it is vital that we understand our choice and the reasons behind it if we are determined to stand by it.

Why would anybody want to take the Red Pill then? Because, IMHO, that is the only choice we have, even though Blue Pill not only sounds more attractive, but also seems to make much more sense.

The reason why Blue Pill does not represent any choice is simple:
“everything we pay attention to grows”
If we chose to live our thoughts, listen to them, pay respect and cultivate them, effectively becoming their slaves - then they will just grow larger, hungrier, more demanding, and haunting, knowing that we have become dependant on them, until we will get totally trapped in them, unable to escape, stuck in a Virtual World of our own anguish which, over time, will become more and more unbearable, a living Hell.
Blue Pill is like any drug addiction - sooner or later it will start to bring in increasing misery, agony and suffering - its original purpose and attraction lost. Our investment in Blue Pill will cease to pay off and our losses will just keep mounting up over time.

The reason why Red Pill is the only choice is simple, for the very same reason:
“everything we pay attention to grows”
If we stop paying attention to our thoughts so deeply and passionately, particularly to unwanted ones, they will stop growing and slowly start to wither away, for they won’t feel needed anymore and there won’t be anything they can cling, hang on to. Our investment in Red Pill will start to pay off and our profits will just keep mounting up over time.

But the choice of becoming an Observer is not an easy one - some parts of us will still be deeply locked in Virtual Reality Bondage and therefore we will have to maintain the state of “dual reality” - being an Observer as well as a person trapped in his/her own Virtual Reality. And how will we know which is which?
One also has to accept the fact that one will never be able to fully free oneself from the Blue Pill Birth Bondage - Red Pill is not an absolute, guaranteed solution - it is an “every little helps” remedy.

Being a Prisoner of one’s own thoughts is a Living Hell
Being an Observer of one’s own thoughts is a Good Laugh

One single negative thought we managed to eradicate from our mind is one single improvement in quality of our lives, and therefore lives of others and the Universe as a whole. “Old habits die hard” implies that any newly learnt habit becomes more and more permanent over time. “Practise makes it permanent” as they say.

Harmony naturally results in a deep silence, joy, delight.
Conflict results in anxiety, anguish, stress, tension.
The EGO is nothing but all the tensions that you have created around
yourself.

–Osho

Assumptions:
-) We influence, if not create, reality but we have no idea how we do it, nor we have any control over this - because any event is an outcome of practically infinitive number of factors that contributed to its arising.
-) “Reality” is analogue, Universe is analogue, everything FLOWS rather than progressing step by step
-) Any event must exist in a field of potentiality before it arises - any event must exist in a state of an unobserved particle, when its state is un-determined
-) The State of Potentiality is the most powerful state, absolutely still and absolutely silent, like a Calm before the Storm, or Nothingness before Big Bang, it is a state of pure, accumulated energy that hasn’t decided what to do with itself yet hehehehehe

Now then:
Let’s consider for a moment a balloon being filled with air. If we continue filling balloon with air - it will explode sooner or later. But if we make a tiny hole in it - some of the air will be escaping. The explosion will not be as powerful and entirely different - because of this tiny little hole.
Or, if we consider a particle in its un-determined state - even a sneak glance at it, a minute observation, will determine at least some of its state - and therefore particle will lose its infinitive potential of being anything.

Therefore any useless speculation on what is or will be actually chips away from what is or will be, dilutes it. It is like watching the balloon filling with air, not knowing that there is a tiny hole in it somewhere.

Furthermore we are, particularly these days, “digital creatures”… we think in “digital”, not analogue, we think in “steps”, we think in “if this then that” procedural language.
But we also know that everything, including our brains, is analogue. Therefore there are always “gaps” between “steps”, between “this or that”, we think, we perceive, we analyse, we speak - always digitally, always from one point to the next, missing the gaps in between points.

Therefore the outcome we expect is always “skewed”, inaccurate, or not even resembling our “trend predictions” - because we are entirely blind to half of the “story”… i.e. “gaps”

The more we try to predict, analyse, define, describe - the more “gaps” we create in the process… and hence the more we move away from what is really happening. One could say that the “real life” is happening exactly “there” - in the field of gaps which we cannot perceive, due to digital, logical “yes or no” nature of our brains, due to the fact that we think in order to determine.

And I start to think that this is where “being in touch with oneself” term originates from. It is not a metaphor, it is actually an act of Mind touching, “linking” with the Heart, on vibrational level, thus creating an envelope of stillness and silence, embracing the field of potential, rather than panickly trying to dissolve it with thoughts and/or words.

It is only natural. We are scared of stillness and silence, energy seemingly not moving, not manifesting itself - for we simply and quite logically equate it with Death.

“Being in Touch with Oneself” is a practice, a method, of opening oneself to those “gaps”, learning to acknowledge them, learning to CONCIOUSLY live through them, and, first of all of course hehehehehe, learning to unlearn the fear of them.

(:o

P.S.

• Some people touch the area of their heart in order to confirm/re-affirm that they are trying to get “in touch” hehehehehehe
• Eadon tells me: So getting in touch with reality is touch in the sense of “observation”, by observing ourselves, we make ourselves reality and hence learn about ourselves, hence getting in touch with ourselves.

I think we sometimes repeat same stories to others over and over again because our Ego
enjoys it so much…. it actually BLOCKS OUT our memory…. I know.. I CLIMBED
KILIMANJARO lol… and my “scientific” conclusion is “tell sign”… if that happens… the person telling the story (they know they had told before) will NEVER ask “have I told you
this before?”.. or “hold on, are you interested?”.. the interest in telling the story
becomes so great… the Ego fuelled story-teller anticipates all the questions which could reduce that interest…and deals with them “accordingly”… (usually by not hearing them or not giving the listener the chance to ask them hehehehe)…. and of course, this is a general statement, nothing to do with my personal success of actually CLIMBING KILIMANJARO.

All I am trying to say is that Comfort Zones is what one seeks more and more the older one gets. Which means preference to put up with whatever we have rather than facing a change of getting something better.

(:o

Most people think they are “one”. This pattern of thinking could be dangerous, for we are not “one” at all, instead, we are rather like “Clockwork Orange”, a multitude of parts and clogs, which are constantly in conflict with each other. And how can conflicts be resolved if we are not even aware of them?

One could say that it doesn’t matter, that, as long as we are in peace with ourselves, we don’t have to bother ourselves with our internal machinery. “Make Peace, no War”. But remember Cold War? And think of Israel and Palestine. Can the peace, achieved by constant threat of violent retaliation be really called “peace”? It sure has a practical meaning to ordinary people, who are not interested in politics, and just want to get on with their living, rather than become victims of “collateral damage”, but then again, if You think of human psychology, the issues which are not addressed do not go away, they just grow internally, and become more violent outwardly.

It is important what we think and how we express our thinking outwardly. It is good to know that there are still some people in this world who think differently and take delight in sharing it with others… even if we don’t agree with their views or find them obvious or boring hehehehe…

Allow me then, without further ado, to present one of those differently speaking people, taking delight in being so:

We get so brain washed by media, propaganda at work, laws, supermarkets… that it is very easily to forget who we actually are…and who we want to be. There is a huge conflict here. In order to be a “good person” we have to serve our society well. And in order to do that, we have to embrace all that society is, warts, taxes, laws and government propaganda and all. But I think many of us do want to be a “good person”, but not necessarily want to be who their Government wants them to be. There is very deep, and spiritual, and religious, conflict of interests here. Even thinking of Jesus story, he never rebelled against his government, he lovingly accepted its each decision, no matter how costly it was to him. But he openly spoke out, shared his thoughts and feelings with others, not as a rebel or government opposition, but as one human sharing human experience with another human.

Fragmenting ourselves is very important me thinks. As the YouTube video indicates, there is at least 2 of “us”: one person who says “You shouldn’t really”.. and the other who says “Oh.. go ahead anyway! You deserve it this time!”… And having a 3rd person, who laughs at the nonsensical negotiating dialogues between those 2 is within anybody’s reach.

Without being split into multiple personalities, You have NOBODY to turn to when there are internal problems. Also, the more parts of yourself You can identify as not being “You” but just a part of the machinery, the more You start to lose the sense of “I” and gain the sense of “all is one”…

It is simple. Scientists started to discover God by breaking parts of the machinery, by identifying the smaller and smaller parts of it until they run out of parts they could identify or break apart.

And I believe religious people, truly religious people, always tried to connect those little parts into some kind of science, Buddhism and yoga being a prime example here, not as much as blind religion, but rather the method of living one’s life. Studied and described with scientific approach and consistency.

So scientists and religious people meet “half way”, not as a truce in the warring realm, but because they are both circling around the same light bulb… Both were attracted to the marvel of this realm, the unbelievable being obvious, and therefore very difficult to prove intellectually.

And any intellectual proof is not a proof at all. It is just means to pacifying our border controls, turning our firewalls off, so the content can slip through our biological passport controls in order so it can come to attention of our inner self which can then examine it. And then the decision can be made. And even if it is a wrong one, at least our inner self can learn from its mistakes. Most of the times it doesn’t have a chance for growth, for most of the teaching messages are blocked before they can even reach it.

With all due attention, where all due attention is due, it is the waiting that tires me most, it is the waiting that I find most tiresome, we are immersed and floating in this thing called “time”, this thing that is, feels infinitive, non-substantial, invisible, undetectable by our senses, yet perceived, over time, in some indirect way or other, “I used to have a head full of hair and now I don’t” forces me to think, believe, assume that some time has passed between then and now, but any attempt to quantify it, get a feeling, perception of the amount, of how much of time has passed, fails me miserably, what is “10 years”? How does it feel? Can you compare any 10 years in your life with another 10? So it is just flowing, time is, flowing infinitively, without beginning or end, without source or destination, it is flowing in a direction we call “forward” or “future”, but it ain’t really matter which way the arrow of time is pointing, the important thing is that it IS pointing in some direction, a direction, and even though this might not be strictly true to a scientist, it is good enough for a common folk, time flows in a direction, in an orderly, sequential manner. Chunks of time flow following each other, and therefore events in our lives happen one after another, very much as frames in a film follow each other, and although there is very little difference between neighboring frames, the overall result, i.e. film, is open to practically infinitive variety: loads of films were made and are still being made each year, because each of them is so different, despite all of them having very similar neighboring frames,
only film is of a digital nature, the frames have very clearly defined boundaries between them, a frame being a very definitive and measurable basic unit of a film, but what is a basic unit of time? we can measure 15 minutes with a precision near to absolute, but that hardly means that quarter of an hour is a basic unit of time, and then of course different creatures have different life spans, it maybe even that there are creatures whose life span is less than 15 minutes, so perhaps a “lifetime” sounds like a more realistic basic unit of time, mainly because it addresses the relativity aspect of time, and hence waiting, for although we are immersed in this infinitive stream, our time is not infinitive, we have only limited amount of it and know it straight from the beginning, there is a conflict of interests here, in order to avoid tensions in our lives we should express, rejoice, become one with the nature of the stream that carries them forward, nature of limitless timelessness but how can we, how can we embrace and live through our lives limitless timelessness nature of time when the very time carries us towards, reminds us of our very definitive and timed nature, there is a clear conflict of interests here and perhaps that is why religions, for example, resolve this paradox by means of afterlife, equating timeless time with timeless life, so as I was saying, waiting is killing me…

Yoga / Alexander Technique
Watch Kristina’s posture. It is very rigid, yet seems natural and happy. Even when re-composing herself (when she steps back to adjust) she never loses her posture. Which just proves that it is natural, naturally learnt habit - something which conscious mind does not need to control by thinking about it all the time (and not thinking about it in emergencies such as “step back”) - a habit which has been moved from “conscious” to “subconscious” - so we don’t have to “control it” anymore and it such move also frees our conscious resources to deal with some other matters which we could not previously due to overload.

Joyful Ordinary Journey
Watch Kristina’s smile at the very beginning, and her “I love Hopping” (which I misread for ‘I love hoping’ T-Shirt. Give some attention to the surroundings, ordinary gym, probably in some school, ordinary, sporting clothing Kristina and Vova are wearing, everything is ordinary, even the way they perform their “acts” are utmostly ordinary matter, there is no “Big Deal” anywhere, no matter how hard one searches for it. But there is an ordinary joy, pleasure of doing something that pleases one.

Egoless Perfection
Vova throws his clubs on the floor, but there is no anger in this motion, it is more of a manifestation “they are only clubs”. Kristina steps back at one point, probably to adjust to not 100% perfect delivery by Vova, but she does it with grace and, yet again, posture, and without any trace of annoyance, without any trace of failed expectations, she does it with total humbleness and joy of receiving an opportunity to put her faith, her composure into practise.

Control / Spontaneity / Mastery over one’s own life
The way Kristina and Vova juggle those clubs gives an impression that they are almost not necessary there, that it all happens “naturally”. They do not control clubs, clubs control them - they are just reacting to what has been thrown at them. And because it has been thrown at them - they have to react, in the only way they know, there is no time for thinking here, for any analysis. So they react to it in perfect way.
But of course. It probably took many, many years to learn, condition oneself to react that way. And here comes Zen and the Archer blending with the arch’s string, and Buddhism and Nirvana and Liberation: yes, for many, many years one has to practise, try to control something in order to reach perfection. But the sweet price of perfection, of this enormous effort and dedication is that, once one reaches it, one does not need to control or even think about it anymore: it is kind of shifted into subconscious, “spontaneous” area of our brain, Blind Zatoichi and his sword - he does not need eyes to confirm that what he is doing is right.

Automation and happiness
Kristina and Vova seem to managed to automate their “brain patterns” and corresponding bodily behaviour when it comes to juggling clubs. This maybe sounds awful as a term, but it isn’t. It just proves how “easily” (with many, many years of hard work and dedication) we can condition ourselves, our brains, to achieve anything we dream off.
We have, in fact, done it already. We have automated our brains how to be unhappy, how to create and consequently live on the dramas, how to look for something wrong when everything seems right…. how to prove to others that our lives are not as good as theirs because……

Anger Management
Last clip. Kristina and Vova seem to throw clubs at themselves “in anger” (new corporate term which I, worryingly, noticed is used more and more, “to do things in anger”) but they are not throwing them “directly”.. using the shortest route… they maybe throwing them angrily but following the longer, “up in the air” route… there are a lot of lessons, analogies and quotes here (”When angry count to four…”), the one which strikes me most is that, simply because of this longer route, the anger seems to hang in the air above them - so they are not affected by it, so practical advice here is that when angry and in need to hurl abuse at somebody, one should try to use the longest possible route for this abuse to be delivered…. and in most cases the anger will die out before abuse reaches its destination - so we have a chance to recall it or apologize for it before it even arrives hehehehe

It is all to do with those Biblical people straying off into wilderness, and getting lost, being mislead by God / their leaders, and suffering a lot as a result, if I understood correctly, and I really should read this “story” one day, but it all comes together rather nicely and I have a feeling that this year might be a year of fruition… and the reason I am saying that is because I no longer say “I have finally cracked it”.. or “I have found the way!!” or even “finally there is a hope”… no, it is a simple matter of finally accepting being lost and taking pleasure / comfort in it… and yes, discovering the paths / ways that lead somewhere (whether there were none before)… they don’t necessary lead to “better things” / paradise …. they just lead somewhere… and it is good to walk… it clears one’s mind, awakens and grounds one’s spirit, does good for a physical body…. so I guess discovering all those new paths, and seeing a pleasure in walking them down… shifting the focus from “I have problems which I HAVE TO sort out” to “I am a traveller who travels and enjoys the journey”… that is what I am talking about perhaps…

And hence there is no “hope” and no “I finally cracked it”… because both are destination points, and the focus has shifted from reaching that point to enjoying the journey and being fully part of it…..

P.S.
And no, those people were NOT mislead by their GOD, there were led to the place where there is no misleading - no false paths already setup so they can follow them like a cattle… there were forced to realize that in infinitive number of paths they could follow there is only one “correct” one… the one they chose to walk….

It is quite amazing and wonderful, even though a lot of it quite easily explainable, how quickly and efficiently laws of karma, or whatever one wants to call it, have immediate and very direct effect on our lives when we are self-grasping, self-obsessed, focused on our needs and wants, when we are cruel, inconsiderate, arrogant and relating to needs and wants of others only through the prism of our Ego.

Luckily the same almost immediate and direct, but obviously opposite effect seems to take place when we are, trying to be considerate, compassionate, understanding towards needs and wants of others, when, even if we are unable to put others before us, at least we are able to give up, quash, subdue our self importance, demands and “rights to have”.

It is quite amazing and wonderful, even though a lot of it quite easily explainable, because those almost immediate effects are very practical positive or negative feedback loop, which enables us to experiment “in real time” with the laws of cause and effect.

It is quite amazing and wonderful, even though a lot of it quite easily explainable, because those almost immediate effects give us very little margin for doubt and mental speculation: it becomes very obvious, very clear how our behaviour and attitude directly affects our lives. And hence we are in position to very quickly realize that we don’t have a choice, that if we want our lives and our world to be a nice and loving and kind place to live in…. there is only one, only one way to go about it.

Some people are born without some limbs or internal organs.
Some people lose their limbs or internal organs through the course of their lives.
They lack what some other people have.
But they also have what some other people lack.
One-eyed person will naturally wish to be a person who has 2 eyes.
But not a person who has 2 eyes but no limbs, arms or both.

A person with one eye will never regain the other eye.
A person with one limb will never regain the other limb.
Those people truly are lacking, lacking what MOST of human population has.

This, however, does not hold true when we consider human inner qualities.
Every coward has a brave dormant hero buried somewhere inside.
Every brave hero has a dormant coward buried somewhere inside.
Every coward is simply scared of his infinitive capacity for heroism.
Every hero is brave simply out of his infinitive fear of cowardice.

There is no such thing as “lack of” when it comes to human inner qualities.
The “lack of” is just the other, not currently visible, side of the same coin.
Turn the coward side of the coin and You will see the hero on the other side.
Turn the hero side of the coin and coward will be staring at You instead.

In generic terms we could call one side of the coin “capacity” and the other “manifestation”.
A kind and loving person ALWAYS has a capacity to be cruel.
A cruel person ALWAYS has a capacity to be kind and loving.
Nobody, nobody lack the coin though, just as no human in this world lacks a human organ called “heart”.

“Lacking compassion” then, one, if not most important human quality, is not an issue then.
Everybody possesses compassion, it is just a matter of how close to the “surface” it “bubbles”, and how much of it manifests itself outwards.
Every human is compassionate, including murderers, rapists and dictators.
But not all people had a chance, an opportunity to recognize it and express, or indeed,
learnt or were taught how to do it.

A cruel person can become kind and loving if/when shown that his cruelty is nothing else but misplaced kindness and love.
A coward can become a brave hero if/when shown that his cowardice is just misunderstood courage.

The thing about human inner qualities is that, unlike physical parts of our bodies, they can be “gained”, “lost” and “regained” - because those are just different sides of the same coin, but the coin is ALWAYS with us, even though we can see only one side of it at the time. We can lose the sight of one side of the coin, but never the coin itself.

We can, however, keep a watchful eye on that coin, so even if it gets flipped over we remember what the other, invisible side represents.
And by watching the coin we can also, slowly but surely, stop it from flip-flopping so often.
We can check on it once, twice, three times a day, every hour, every passing moment.
And while we are at it, we can also polish it a bit on each occasion, give it a bit more spark, more presence, more welcome.

And this is marvellous aspect of “growing old”. When our bodies slowly but surely disintegrate, when we start to lose teeth, hair, beautiful faces, nice bums and sexy six-packs - there is less and less of physical to grasp and be pre-occupied with - and our inner qualities gain better and better chance to shine through.

And with a help of our commitment and dedication we can not only help them to shine through - we can actually help them to grow and blossom. This process, very much like maturing wine, takes time and patient effort. But as any wine connoisseur will tell You: this effort is well worth its outcome.

(:o

Bloody Hell.. it just occured to me that I just treat myself as a mirror.. reflector thinggie… I do things in order to see how I will react to them.. sort of delayed mirror thinggie… I do something cruel to see how well I can cope with my own cruelty… I do something seemingly selfless to see how selfish I really am… I don’t take my high bloody pressure pills to see what a stroke will do to me… da bottom line being a little bit krazy, and I do krazy things to see how mad and mentally unstable I REALLY am….

I WANT TO GET TO KNOW BETTER THE PERSON IN ME I DONT WANT TO BE. THE MURDERED. THE RAPIST. THE CRIMINAL. THE SELFISH. THE NOT-CARING. THE DISGUSTING. THE SMELLY. THE UGLY. THE FAT. THE MESSED UP. THE LONELY. THE DESPARATE. THE DANGEROUS. THE PSYCHOPATH. THE CRUEL. THE SEXIST. THE AGIST. SELF-CENTERED. DISORGANIZED. CHILDISH. IMMATURE. LACKING COMPASSION. FEELING SORRY FOR ONESELF. BEING CARELESS ABOUT ONE’S PHISICAL WELL BEING. BEING CARELESS ABOUT ONE’S MENTAL WELL BEING. BEING CARELESS ABOUT ONE’S SPIRITUAL WELL BEING. BEING CARELESS ABOUT ONE’S SOCIAL WELL BEING. BEING CARELESS ABOUT ONE’S ENNVIRONMENTAL WELL BEING. BEING CARELESS ABOUT ONE’S WORK-RELATED WELL BEING. BEING CARELESS…

Maybe it is about compassion. Maybe, in order to accept what one hates about oneself, one has to get to know it well, the motives, the reasons, one has to become intimate, passionate and compassionate towards one’s hates, embrace them, manage them and feed them with Love… Personal Demons can only be tamed by Love and Resolve… only then they will be happy dancing around, making Love Not War…

But it also could be that this is some messed up, over-spiritualism, “I am not my body”.. my body, my brain, my thinking, my emotions, they are just artistic material to be experimented with, instrument players in the orchestra so the maestro can learn his trade, clogs in the machine, none of them being important, the relation between them being vital….

There is also, very unlikely of course, possiblity that all of this stuff is just pure laziness and nothing deeper than that. But own grave diggers are not interested in the shallow…