HOW REALLY FREE ARE WE?
posted Jan. 29, 2006

The nexus of problems we face as re-designers of human institutional systems that have atrophied naturally over time due to lack of justice-based maintenance, fundamentally have to do with how a lot of people –– perhaps most –– think and interact with the world.

This has been documented and commented upon by a host of people, extending from the ancient prophets of all the great religions, to recent writers such as Joseph Campbell, Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, J. Krishnamurti, Richard Bach and Shunryu Suzuki.

I've felt for a long time that us warriors in The Just Third Way must not become trapped in these ages-old dungeons of ego-mind-think –– because it will doom this movement like many attempts in the past at "changing the world" –– which, of course, is impossible.  Life is perfect.  One of the many challenges of living is:  Can we SEE, FEEL and BE this FACT?

It can be observed that what most people consider evil in conventional terms can be traced to the divided mind.  To a mind that stands apart.  To a mind that screens.  To a mind that connives.  To a mind that cleaves the skull, stands on the table, blinking and staring back.  Like some ugly alien life force truly bewitching humankind.

The reality of freedom can never be grasped by the divided mind.

Most people associate freedom not in what can be observed in nature, but in humans' supposedly independent free will and the power of free choice.

But if I separate my mind from myself and my experiences, freedom seems to be how much I can barge around the world; yet the world somehow always seems to resist and throws a lot of rocks back.

But to the undivided mind there is no distinction between "I" and the world.  There is just one giant endless Streaming that engulfs everything.  This Power provides the foamy crest in an ocean wave, the pulse felt through a human wrist or the thrust of magna out a volcano's throat.  Life is not a matter of "me" pushing the world around or it sometimes pushing back.

Having a choice is not freedom.  Choices are decisions usually motivated by pleasure or pain, and the divided mind constantly schemes about getting "I' into pleasure and as far away from pain as possible.

But the sweetest pleasures are spontaneous, and pain at its worst is an anticipation before it's even slated to arrive.

The often false sense of being "free" wanes when trying to do impossible or meaningless things.  We are not free to jump across a canyon, march safely across a busy freeway of speeding traffic, or prevent blood from being pumped back from our toes.

Freedom, like everything else in Life, is conditional.  There is no such thing as freedom when it contradicts how Life works.  If I split my mind apart from the Streaming, and allow it to command this or command that based on what pleases me, the more I will be incapable of enjoying anything at all.

Because all pleasure exist in the present.  Unless I am aware and acknowledge that fact, future happiness can never be guaranteed.  That sense of "losing ones self" in the moment and resisting any urge for the mind to play games with time reveals the only true freedom.

This may explain why there are precious few people who support the wisdom of what we're trying to do.  We must spend ample time teaching people how to think, and the traps that lie in wait all around us.  I believe this is contained in Justice Based Management, but perhaps needs to be elevated in this important education.

If we can't interact normally with the Everyday World, which some name God or Tao, we're not going to counterbalance good and evil.

What we name the Streaming is not important; perhaps it may even trigger this disease of human minds splitting apart from what they constantly experience.  Just trying to write about this delicate matter may trigger a backlash, but as humans, we have precious few tools to effectively communicate.

We must daily try to immerse ourselves in this solar-like wind, which exists in our own atmosphere.  It's not easy, because our civilization constantly builds a culture that glorifies Man over Tao.

This wrestling match exists in a circular orbit of time.  It just keeps coming back again and again and again.  Can we break this dog-chasing-tail syndrome so that we can truly strike out in new directions like Capital Homesteading that holds so much promise?

Saint money.  How can humans have the energy or time to connect with the Streaming Metaphysic when we're all slaves to countless hours spent balancing on an economic teeter totter that has grown dangerously unstable for people sitting on either end?

These are challenging flaws that require judicious redesign.  Nothing but the future of mankind depends upon it.

Just some thoughts from a struggler of One Mind...

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November 12, 2005

Greetings and Salutations to You All,

One of the subject matters that has engrossed me my whole life has been –– for want of a better word –– the Metaphysic.  Or, Study of Reality.  Or any other way you want to use English words to describe how people respond, react or deal with Life (probably would be easier and more productive if we just drew pictures or told parables, which a lot of the ancients did with myths handed down from various cultures...)

I'm always on the lookout for authors and speakers who can "describe what can't be described" about how Life "is."  Two of my favorite are Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley.

I've found another author, Barry Goss, and his Ebook "The Manifesting Mindset" which I attach in pdf.  It's about 52 pages with double-spaced lines.  A bit long, parts of it kind of corny (YOU try and take a stab at writing about how the Intelligence of Life works...I have, and it's hard...), but overall I highly recommend it.  Print it out on some old recycled paper you have lying around, take it with you and when you have time, slowly go through it.  I don't know anything about Mr. Goss, but my hat's off to anyone trying to help illuminate "The True Path."

Whether or not happiness and success finds you in your life (and you thought you were trying to find it?) depends so much on your mind.  How do you think? with it?  If you daily "reboot" your mind and refreshed head out into the morning –– compare this method to continually grinding day-in-and-day-out thinking old thoughts or memories from yesterday, last week, last year.  Or thoughts of the future, events of which you couldn't possibly know unless you had a knack for reading crystal balls or traveling through linear time.

Probably the best and most reoccurring symbol that many mystics, shamans and aesthetics have used and continue to use to describe this invisible but very feel-able Force –– is a watercourse way, or a river.  This symbol and the overall Force is being more scientifically proven by burgeoning studies and discoveries of quantum physics.

When you begin to walk across a river, it has been said that you can never step in the same place twice.  That is also true about everyday Life.  It flows around us constantly like a river.  We can't physically see it, but one can feel it.  It is power always on the move.  It doesn't stop for anyone or any thing.  Yet it is infinitely loving and supportive.  You can lean on it, let it caress you, let it empower you.  The Force's power is Infinite.  We are all children of the stars that birthed our world.

What we "think" might be permanent really isn't.  It's a trick (how fun would Life be if it was all predictable?)  Because it doesn't appear Life was designed for someone to take a perch off to the side unnoticed.  Life is about motion –– doing things, playing and getting involved in what's going on.  Living your life in the Moment will take practice, because for now we live in a culture obsessed with the past and future.  You can better measure things that have already happened, an obsession with many humans.

Unfortunately, most of us don't use the power of our minds appropriately to match the Force.  We use it instead to retreat, withdraw and shrivel our lives away with past memories of what has happened to us so far.  The mind can summon up these regurgitated thoughts over and over again, like a spell put on us by an evil, clever witch.

The Ultimate Reality is the Present Moment.  Because that's where it's all happenin'!  Like stepping with bare feet into a gurgling creek on a hot day, don't try and anticipate or predict what may happen NOW by the use of past or futuristic thoughts.  If you take this approach (and one can certainly choose to if arrogant enough), you will miss out.

On what?  Things like true storybook adventures such as meeting interesting people, finding fascinating types of work, discovering things or encouraging actions to aid the Common Good, traveling to all parts of the globe and amassing both monetary and spiritual riches beyond even your grinding mind's wildest conjuring.

In this new millennium, some say humankind is poised above a trampoline of a leap in Consciousness that will far surpass humans' recent technological wonders.  The Internet's unprecedented capabilities of linking people together with words, pictures, movies and real-time video cams will probably be one of the biggest innovations responsible for ushering in a new Age of humans interconnecting together.

Only time and people's participation (or not) will tell.

So take a read and report back to the group about what you've learned.  Enjoy the adventure.  I certainly have, thanks to all of you in my immediate and extended families who continually lift me up~~Steve