Author: Scott

We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.

— David Lynch

Once a habitual pattern has taken hold of our mind (anger, craving, jealousy, dullness, pride etc.), we are usually not aware of the fact. The habit just sweeps in with it’s entourage of story line, emotional charge, justification, and ignorance of other options that might be available.

Usually we take all that to be completely real rather than seeing it as partly, if not completely, our own projection.

~ David Nichtern

In addition to a certain living standard, another condition must be met: if man is to be successfully propagandized, he needs at least a minimum of culture. Propaganda cannot succeed where people have no trace of Western culture. We are not speaking here of intelligence; some primitive tribes are surely intelligent, but have an intelligence foreign to our concepts and customs.

A base is needed — for example, education; a man who cannot read will escape most propaganda, as will a man who is not interested in reading. People used to think that learning to read evidenced human progress; they still celebrate the decline of illiteracy as a great victory; they condemn countries with a large proportion of illiterates; they think that reading is a road to freedom.

All this is debatable, for the important thing is not to be able to read, but to understand what one reads, to reflect on and judge what one reads. Outside of that, reading has no meaning (and even destroys certain automatic qualities of memory and observation). But to talk about critical faculties and discernment is to talk about something far above primary education and to consider a very small minority. The vast majority of people, perhaps 90% percent, know how to read, but do not exercise their intelligence beyond this.

They attribute authority and eminent value to the printed word, or, conversely, reject it altogether. As these people do not possess enough knowledge to reflect and discern, they believe — or disbelieve — in toto what they read. And as such people, moreover, will select the easiest, not the hardest, reading matter, they are precisely on the level at which the printed word can seize and convince them without opposition. They are perfectly adapted to propaganda.

~ Jasque Ellul

We are each a variant of the ~7 billion “awareness pores” through which this operating system we call a Universe is conscious of itself. As we replicate ourselves via biological reproduction, the Universe replicates itself via our individual as well as collective awareness of ourselves.

Likewise, our technology, the machines we build to automate human effort, has only one trajectory toward one objective and that is to mirror the Universe with a more resilient and perfect reflection. Unless technology reflects the elegance of nature, it is eventually replaced by that which does.

All systems seek perfection and replicate themselves as they absorb previous, lesser iterations. The Universe is the ultimate system and our awareness is yet another step toward unitive perfection.

Therefore, if you ever sense we will one day be absorbed by the machines invented by our collective intelligence it’s because we are. As I type we are.

The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor is a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit of the others and yet preserve his individuality and grow according to his own law of growth.

If the Parliament of Religions has shown any thing to the world, it is this: It has proved to the world that holiness, purity, and charity are not the exclusive possessions of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the most exalted character.

In the face of this evidence, if anybody dreams of the exclusive survival of his own religion and the destruction of the others, I pity him from the bottom of my heart and point out to him that upon the banner of every religion will soon be written, in spite of resistance: “Help and not Fight,” “Assimilation and not Destruction,” “Harmony and Peace and not Dissension”.

– Swami Vivekananda at the parliament of religion conference in 1893

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

~ Oscar Wilde

A unique, simplistic comfort emerges from the grasping and attachment of religionists and sports fans alike. A solid, statuesque illusion.

Let us light the torch of our awareness and learn again how to drink tea, eat, wash dishes, walk, sit, drive, and work in awareness. We do not have to be swept along by circumstances. We are not just a leaf or a log in a rushing river.

With awareness, each of our daily acts takes on a new meaning, and we discover that we are more than machines, that our activities are not just mindless repetitions. We find that life is miracle, the universe is a miracle, and we too are a miracle.

– Thich Nhat Hanh

When we see life as it really is, it all suddenly makes sense. Then the changes that are occurring are seen as gifts and not burdens. And then future changes will be demonstrations of creation, not tests of endurance.

Life is intended to produce for you a direct experience of who you really are, and then, an opportunity to go to the next level in your expression of that.

~ Neale Donald Walsch