I Killed Myself

Dead, gone and forgotten. My "self" is dead. I no longer have to defend it. I no longer have to worry if it is going to heaven or hell or what karma or sin it has or if it will reincarnate into a bat. It is dead, I killed it.

Boy, what a difference a dead self makes. Of course, it does not mean that there is not worry for this piece of carcass known as Jim, but the carcass is just a tool, a vehicle, a toy to be played with until it is worn out then thrown away. "I" don't have to worry about it anymore because "I" am dead.
You might ask, "How did you kill yourself if you are still here?" Well, “I” am not here, the body is. “I” am dead. At least the part of Jim that thinks of himself as a body or a separate being with beginning and end.

I killed myself by looking for the self. Eventually I saw that the self is just a thought, an electro-magnetic impulse traveling around the brain/body mechanism. When I fully let go of focusing on anything, particularly the sensations in the body/brain, then the instrument relaxed, let go and stop creating any more impulses, including the impulse known as ‘self’.

Or course, acknowledging that this happened was another impulse which brought back the original impulse of self. BUT, the power of the idea or thought known as self had been broken and has diminished ever since.

It is wonderful being free from the grip that my ‘self’ had on me. No longer is there worry about ‘my’ career. Karma and sin have no meaning. Since “I” am no longer important then ‘my’ world is no longer important. Hell, I can now see that nothing in the manifested universe is important so why worry about anything. It is all here just for the fun of it. All is meaningless (unless I want to play with meaning and create meaning for it). All is vanity.

Even writing this is vanity, but it is also a lot of fun.
Now I am free to enjoy and love ALL that life has to offer.
Yet, habits die hard and the habit of thinking about my ‘self’ is strong. Sometimes there is forgetting that the self is not real and I go back to worrying about it. Usually I wake back up by myself but sometimes it take a true friend, one who really cares about me, to stun me back awake by confronting my silly idea that I am real or important or that I matter or that anything I could ever do mattered or that anything anyone could do or has ever done could really matter.

Sometimes a go a long time before I wake back up. In those times I wish I had more friends who really cared about me enough to jolt me back awake. So I have dedicated my life (Opps, there I go again, like it is ‘my’ life in the first place, silly me) to waking up others so that they can wake me up when I fall asleep. AND, so they can also fully enjoy and love ALL that life has to offer.

Wait, OTHERS???? There I go again, thinking there are ‘others’ in the universe. How can that be if “I” have no beginning or end, I therefore must be infinite and all inclusive. In infinity there can be no ‘other’ so there are no others. Ah, then I am not waking up ‘others’ so they can fully enjoy and love ALL that life has to offer; I am waking the REST of me up to fully enjoy and love ALL that life has to offer.

Phew, that was a lot of work. Ah, but it is worth it. What greater gift can I give to myself (and all there other ‘selves’ of me out there) that to wake up to enjoy this perfect world and universe?

Does anybody want to join me?

Unnecessary Suffering

I am really sad to see people abusing themselves emotionally just over something someone said to them. It is a sad world that programs us to abuse ourselves just so others can control and manipulate us. I am really glad I took the time and effort to overcome the world's ability to stimulate my self abusive behavior. ... I would really like to find a way to share this ability/skill with others.

We can all overcome the world's ability to stimulate our self-abusive behavior IF we are willing to take the time and effort to develop the skills necessary.

It is pretty obvious that the skill of controlling our bowels and bladder improves the quality of our life experience, for we no longer need to wear diapers. But most people have no idea that they can learn to control their emotional self-abusive behavior with just a little bit of awareness and effort. Anger, fear, guilt, shame, doubt, pessimism and all forms of negative or unattractive emotional and mental states and with consciousness we can choose to experience these or not. We can also choose happiness, joy, love, peace, freedom and we can choose to see beauty in all that life offers.

But all this takes skill and practice just as it took awareness and effort to develop the skills of walking, controlling our bowels and bladder, riding a bike, driving a car or most anything else.

There is no greater gift we can give ourselves or others than the gift of UNCONDITIONAL happiness, joy, love, peace and freedom.

Love Yourself First

“The measure you give is the measure you shall receive.” Jesus

If you love yourself then you are loved. If the whole world loves you but you do not love yourself then you will not know love. If the whole world hates you but you love yourself then you will know love.

It does not matter whether or not God loves you or Jesus loves you or anybody loves you, if YOU do not love yourself then you will not be loved. If you love yourself then you will have the experience of love.

Do we want to love ourselves all the time? No, not really. We might think we want to be loved all the time, we might think we want to be accepted unconditionally no matter what we do, but the reality is we do not, for we use the idea of none acceptance to motivate ourselves to do something. And if we do not ‘do something’ then we will not even take care of ourselves, our bodies and our world. So this loving yourself will sometimes be conditional and sometimes it will be unconditional.

In order for our love to be perfect it must embrace the all, accept all reality. That means we must accept, enjoy and even love conditional love, which is part of the all. There is a time to accept and a time to not accept. There is a time to love and a time to hate. Without both there cannot be embracing of the all.

What is Love?

I saw a video on YouTube that asked the question, What is Love, so I thought I would offer my experience of my exploration of that questions.

Self Judgment = God's Judgment

We all judge ourself and we are our harshest critic. Judgment can be good and even fun until we start to believe that it is true. We are the "God" that judges ourselves when we "die" to our busyness.

Dynamic Compassion

Dynamic Compassion is a compassion that goes beyond just respect, service and care. Compassion is the willingness to suffer with others. Dynamic compassion is the underlying cause of change or growth that comes from that willingness to suffer with others.

Dynamic compassion is a willingness to engage the world or a situation that is unhealthy, possibly making that situation temporarily more dynamic (dis-eased) so as to bring about a change towards a healthier situation.

I remember a situation from my childhood where my mother demonstrated Dynamic Compassion with my older sister that probably saved her life and gave me a great example of love, which was a deep and profound experience in my life. I was about five or six at the time and all three of us, my older sister, myself and my younger sister, had the measles. My younger sister and I got over the measles in the normal amount of time but my older sister did not. My mother was worried about this because she had heard that measles, if they last too long, can do permanent damage or even kill. So my mother called the doctor who told her to induce the spots on the skin to eruption. To do this he said she should draw a hot bath that was just less than scalding and put my sister in it. He said this would be very uncomfortable for my sister but that my mother would have to hold her in the water until the spots erupted. can still remember how my sister screamed and cursed my mother for doing this. My mother had tears in her eyes but also knew that if she did not do this then my sister could die. My sister, still a child, could not understand this.

The spots erupted and my sister got better. But I can see that my sister always seem to hold that experience against my mother and still does not have much of a relationship with her.

But, I can see that this act was an example of Dynamic Compassion, loving when those you are serving cannot understand how you are loving them. This is unconditional love for it was not conditional upon a return of appreciation or love.

Dynamic Compassion is much more than Ahimsa, the Buddhist and Hindu doctrine expressing belief in the sacredness of all living creatures and urging the avoidance of harm and violence. Dynamic Compassion goes beyond the equanimity of non-aggression and injury of others to the active involvement in the lives of others. Ahimsa implies an avoidance of involvement in another’s life while Dynamic Compassion implies confronting and embracing involvement in another’s life. Ahimsa is a good start but it does not go far enough. In the spectrum of consciousness Ahimsa only goes half way to equanimity while Dynamic Compassion pushes us toward the extreme positive of love.

Dynamic Compassion means confronting the ills of our society. Non injury is non involvement while confronting is engaging the causes of injury BEFORE they happen or at the root of their source. Compassion by itself may mean being a “Mother Theresa” type person who comforts the wounds of those who have been injured. Dynamic Compassion means confronting the cause of injury so as to protect against future injuries.

Often those who are being harmed are also the ones doing the harm. Many injuries people experience are self-inflicted yet they blame others for their own behavior. For instance, “verbal or emotional abuse” is harm that we have learned to cause ourselves. Dynamic Compassion confronts the source of the injury by confronting the person who is abusing themselves emotionally.

Dynamic Compassion would also motivate one to confront the BELIEF that words are the source of our suffering. For it is this belief that keeps people trapped in the cycle of abuse and violence. Confronting deeply held beliefs in society is not popular but it is loving and deeply compassionate.