Living life inside-out

Life can get very loud at times and the outside world seems to demand your attention. The secret, however, is to recognize what waking up is. To wake up is to understand that the real work is internal. Life should be lived inside-out, not superficially as we are taught.

Most of the ideas I write about now are inspired by Michael Singer. I find that regardless of what else I hear, I always make my way back to his fundamental teachings. I sometimes feel myself taken by a storm which eventually resolves when I come to my senses and set my compass back properly.

There has been a lot of noise lately on social media. Eclipse energy has also been in the mix. We have 3L Atlas making waves. The promise of a biblical rapture, a global reset. All of this is distracting. It takes an awful lot of energy and thought power to contemplate these things. And in the end, when it’s all said and done, your life didn’t really change, but you’re a lot more tired and no better off for it. It all takes you away from your center which drains your energy.

To be honest that isn’t even the half of it. We live in an age of information overload. When you really start to go down the rabbit hole it becomes disturbing if you’re not careful. Castaneda’s idea of the predator (probably an ancient AI parasite) latching on to the filter of the personal mind , serving highly personalized algorithmic thoughts (a house of horrors). Reptilian shapeshifting overlords that control our lives. Galactic Federation ships that are about to save humanity. The list goes on…

I have got half way through reading John C. Lilly’s book Center of the Cyclone which is pretty interesting. Through putting himself in a sensory deprivation tank while taking LSD, Lilly came to some pretty profound revelations. The internal world is real. It’s essentially the interface of a computer with thousands or more programs running in the background, most of which were installed in our formative years and no longer serve our best interests. It is this aspect of our minds that creates the filter of the personal mind which makes a mess of our lives. The personal mind, ego or psyche is not our ally.

I think a lot of us are so disturbed by the noise our personal mind makes, we look to the outside for salvation. ‘Distraction’ as Singer says, is a very spiritual word. Pretty much every thought that takes us away from center and who we are (God descended – spirit/consciousness) – the observer, is the ‘fall from the Garden’ and the reason most people are unhappy.

The hard thing to understand (even though it sounds absurd) is that our default state of being is bliss. “Yeah right, so why don’t I feel that?” – because we all fell from the Garden and gave up our state of eternal conscious ecstasy to the filter of the personal mind. We became fixated on and identified with the thing we are staring at (meeeee – our humanness), the ego. That is what is blocking us from living in a state of ecstasy, not an experience, a permanent state.

Even though I am a Christian (I resonate with a lot of the values instilled by the Bible), it is still something happening on the outside. Sure, we are put in this world to enjoy duality, to participate in the story, to help our lower self evolve. But looking at the outside hoping somebody or something will save you is a misguided take. You save yourself by turning inwards and doing the work on yourself. 

Singer said on a recent episode something that really got me. He talked about The Wheel of Life (Bhavachakra) or Samsara, according to Buddhist teachings. He said that the point of life is to leave with less than we came. Yes, that’s right. It isn’t to collect toys and shiny things, even though it can be fun. The point is to lighten your burden in life. Let the energies flow, no matter how uncomfortable they are. Try to be less reactive and accepting of the unfolding of reality. 

The implication is that we are born into this world with past karma. It kind of goes someway to explain why we have a lot of strange behaviors from an early age. Maybe this lifetime could be the one where the past is undone and we can finally untangle the mess we’ve made. That’s what he means by leaving with less. Untangle the personal mind, work on the inside to be more open and flowing. The dissolution of ego is truly the crowning achievement. It doesn’t mean you renounce the world. It also doesn’t mean you don’t have memory. Everything has its nature, and it’s important you collect experiences to understand them. But don’t store things because you couldn’t handle them as they’ll only rot and fester in your personal mind, wreaking havoc on your everyday life.

So to summarize… Live a centered, more conscious, less distracted life. Waking up is to recognize that you can’t fix the outside. The only thing you have control over is your internal life. It’s a single occupancy apartment in there. We all have some cleaning up to do. Once you do that, drop the resistance to outside events and try to live with compassion, life becomes a lot nicer on the inside, which, believe it or not, translates to the outside too. Do not bleed energy to the machine (getting weird again). #Goals