Stop for a moment and think of all the people you know–friends, relatives, people you work with, people you play with, and people you see from time to time as you go about your business, but don’t know well.
Also think for a moment about all the people you know about, but don’t know personally–politicians, celebrities, leaders, and so on.
All these people have one important thing in common: they’re all doing their best to make sense of what it means to be a human being.
Think about it. Here we are, on this spinning rock ball, in the middle of endlessly vast space, in a thin and fragile protected environment absolutely necessary to us if we’re to stay alive. We come into the world, and then, after an undetermined amount of time, we’re gone. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
(Actually, if you think about it, it would be more accurate to say that we come OUT of the world, like an apple comes out of an apple tree, but that’s another story, for another day.)
When you think about it, doesn’t it strike you that this whole business of being a person is quite weird? I mean, what’s it all about? Why is it happening? Is there any purpose to it? If so, what is it?
One of the reasons we wonder so deeply and so universally about these questions is, I believe, that as it’s all going on, we suffer. Our tender bodies allow us to connect and interact with the world, but this same sensitivity also makes us vulnerable to pain. Then there’s the fact that we want things, but sometimes we don’t get them. When that happens, we also suffer. Then there are the times where we get what we don’t want, and we suffer when that happens, too.
As if that weren’t enough, we’re each part of a gigantic web of cause and effect over which we have minimal control. Numberless ongoing physical events throughout the universe affect our galaxy, our solar system, our planet, and, ultimately, our lives. There’s nothing we can do about cosmic rays, gravity, weather patterns, the tides, sunspots, the seasons, the Earth’s magnetic field, the tectonic movements of the continents, earthquakes, the volcanic stirrings beneath the Earth’s crust, the makeup of the atmosphere–and an infinite number of other things totally beyond our control.
What’s more, billions of people, including you, are acting to get what they want in each moment. Some of these actions affect you directly (positively or negatively), while others affect you in a less direct way. Even far-removed events still have an effect on you, though it may be less apparent.
And though your own actions give you some small degree of control over what happens, ultimately you’re at the mercy of forces vastly beyond your control. There’s no getting around it: there is no escape from cause and effect.
As if this wasn’t enough, there’s another big reason why we suffer. Despite our puny influence on cause and effect, we still manage to get what we want some of the time. But even when this happens, whatever it is eventually passes away or falls apart. Everything is impermanent.
We probably suffer about this more than anything else. Nothing lasts. The people and things we love won’t last, and neither will we. Because of this, even though we can enjoy things while they exist, and can enjoy life while it lasts, human existence is imbued with a certain underlying regret or melancholy–an underlying awareness of the transience of things, and a bittersweet sadness at their passing.
You might not have thought of it this way, but much of life, and much of our effort to make sense of it, consists of an attempt to come to terms with these two things: that we’re caught in a web of cause and effect over which we have very limited control, and that all things are impermanent, including ourselves.
Humans have come up with endless strategies to try to deal with this. Some just don’t want to think about it. They stay busy, distracting themselves with activity, drugs, striving, or something else. Some create an after-life or rebirth, or a higher power that they hope does have control, and who might hopefully have a larger plan we’re unaware of, that hopefully will cause everything to turn out alright.
Some decide to make hay while the sun shines. They strive to accumulate wealth, or power, hoping to gain more of a fighting chance in the struggle against cause and effect. Others do what they can to fend off the inevitability of impermanence with modern medicine, exercise, and healthy living. Some find comfort in leaving good works or some sort of legacy that will remain after they’re gone.
Some people just try to stay high all the time. Others become interested in philosophy, hoping to find an explanation. Others become deeply angry and lose control. Still others hope that controlling their mind will provide an answer.
Some hope that individual action will save them. Others seek the security of their group, their tribe, their religion. “If I follow the rules, everything will be fine.” Some divide the world into good and bad, appropriate and inappropriate, and fight against the bad and run after the good. Others hope their adherence to certain guiding principles and ideas will help. Others hope that going beyond principles and ideas, into a state of “no mind,” will provide a solution.
Though it’s not hard to find people who swear by the effectiveness of each of these methods, so far no one has found a way to escape from cause and effect, and no one has found a way to escape from the underlying impermanence of all things. We don’t like to hear this, though. It gives us an uneasy feeling. “There’s no escape? There’s nothing I can do?” So, many people hold out hope that there will turn out to be an afterlife, or that reincarnation will bring them back again (interestingly, Buddhists and Hindus are hoping to step out of that cycle, not perpetuate it).
You may have tried many, or even most of, these methods. You may have tried them all. I’ve tried most of them myself. In the short run, all of them work, or at least seem to work while you’re involved in them. In the long run, none of them work.
As infants we hope that if we cry loudly enough someone will take away our suffering. That’s the only method we have access to. As small children we imagine magical powers that will give us control over what happens (we also keep the crying option open). As we get older, we stop thinking that we have magical powers, but instead attribute them to a parade of powerful others: parents, authority figures, worldly (or spiritual) leaders, a romantic partner, or some higher power.
None of these methods, though, allows us to escape from cause and effect, or from impermanence, because there is no escape. Maybe that’s why we feel so profoundly disappointed (and sometimes angry) when it becomes apparent that one of these “powerful others” isn’t going to provide the answer, the salvation, the solace, or the solution.
No one escapes from these two cornerstones of the human condition. Some people, though, do come to terms with them. Except in rare cases, though, this doesn’t happen until every possible means of escape has been tried.
Human development (which I’ve written about extensively on this blog–see the first dozen or so posts) can be seen as a series of increasingly sophisticated approaches for dealing with impermanence and cause and effect, along with an increasingly broader perspective about such things. Magical thinking (I have magic powers that allow me to control the universe) and mythic thinking (placing the magical power in a powerful other rather than in the self) are examples of this, but there are many other ways human beings attempt to defeat or forestall the effects of cause and effect and impermanence.
You’re probably thinking that I’m about to suggest a solution to all of this. I’m not. I don’t have a solution. There isn’t one. I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but there really IS no escape.
But what if we took the fact that there’s no escape as a starting point, instead of fighting it or ignoring it? What if we could somehow come to terms with death and other forms of impermanence, and with cause and effect? Wouldn’t that at least be more realistic? Perhaps surrendering to “what is” would do something that would make life worthwhile, despite the realities–in the same way that someone who has finally accepted their terminal illness exudes a transcendental radiance and inner peace, creating a sense of awe (and a contact high) in everyone around them.
Buddhists call the unwillingness to accept impermanence and cause and effect delusion, ignorance–in other words, an ignoring of the most basic facts of life. But, you say, accepting all of this seems to be such a profoundly negative outlook. Ironically, though, this embracing of “what is” turns out to be incredibly freeing.
I mentioned earlier that you probably won’t give up your struggle against these two until you’ve tried everything. Just being told that there’s no escape doesn’t work. Reading this post isn’t going to change anything for you. Even if you agree on an intellectual level that there’s no escape, you’ll still keep trying to escape–until and unless you run out of options.
There are some people running around who still believe the Earth is flat. No amount of arguing will change the minds of such people. To change the mind of such a person, you’ll have to show them, experientially. How would you do that? You might say to them, “Well of course the Earth is flat. Wouldn’t it be fun to go look over the edge?”
And, then to make sure you didn’t wander around in circles, and not find the edge just because you were sloppy about your search, you’d program your GPS and head due east, for instance, on a certain line of latitude. In other words, you’d head for the edge you’re hoping to find, in a disciplined way. Then, when the two of you finally returned to the place where you’d started, the flat-Earth person would have to at least admit that the Earth is a cylinder.
In much the same way, a good spiritual teacher will send you off in a disciplined search for a solution to the problems of impermanence and cause and effect–not to find a solution (though that’s what you think is going on), but rather to get you to try every way out, until you have no choice but to come to the inevitable conclusion, from personal experience, that there really is no escape.
I’ve discussed Zen master Genpo Roshi’s innovative Big Mind process many times in this blog. In this approach, you’re asked to speak from various “voices” or aspects of the self (as well as those of the transcendent “no-self”). One of the most potent of these voices is the voice of Great Doubt. This voice represents the part of you that really, truly doubts everything, including that there’s any possible escape, solution, or salvation.
Amazingly, when you really get into the voice of Great Doubt, instead of the darkness and gloom you might expect, you find ultimate freedom. This gives us a second way to drop your impossible quest for a way to escape: you could try every possible way out, until you exhaust every possibility, or you could go right to Great Doubt–be Great Doubt.
Great Doubt is, in fact, the road to Great Enlightenment. Few, however, want to go there. After all, it seems so negative. Great Doubt involves doubting that ANYTHING will save you: your ideas, your knowledge, your skills and expertise, your health, your accomplishments, the power you’ve accumulated, your religion, your physical prowess, your money, your possessions, your fame, your self-esteem, the respect you’ve earned, the therapy you’ve gone through, your love relationship, your children, your friends, your healthy diet, your doctors, your philosophy, yoga, meditation–or anything else.
Let me be clear that I’m not against any of these things. All of the above are part of what makes life juicy, interesting, and worth living. However, if you’re doing them under the illusion that they’ll save you from cause and effect or impermanence, you’ll always end up disappointed.
When you doubt–and therefore see through–all of these things, when you’ve doubted it all (that is, doubted that any of it will ultimately save you from cause and effect and impermanence), there’s nothing left to hang onto. In a spiritual and psychic sense, you’re naked. This seems like it would be very negative, doesn’t it? But once Great Doubt brings you to the place where you have nothing to hang onto, something remarkable happens and YOU’RE FREE.
There’s a koan in Buddhism: How do you take the first step off a 100 foot pole? It seems that taking that step would lead to death, annihilation–a splat on the pavement. Unless you actually take that step, though, you never discover that when you hit bottom, you bounce.
I once heard Alan Watts tell a story about a play he saw when he was a little boy. The curtain opens to a man sleeping in a fancy Victorian-era room crammed with fringed lamps, extravagant Victorian furniture, and all kinds of ornamental gewgaws and bric-a-brac. The alarm clock rings, which enrages the man so much that he grabs his shoe and begins smashing the alarm clock until it’s a flattened pile of metal and gears.
He then jumps out of bed and in his rage begins tearing the sheets off the bed and ripping them to shreds. He then smashes the crockery and the mirror and the furniture, and everything else, until the room is a scene of total demolition. The last thing standing is a tall floor lamp with a fringed lampshade. In a final act of anger, he picks up the lamp and throws it across the room…and it bounces. The surprise is that it’s made of rubber.
Though the actual contents of the story have nothing to do with what I’m talking about (other than the idea that, in the end, you “bounce”), it created such a vivid image that I’ve never forgotten it. Watts told this story to illustrate what I’m saying here: when you take that step off the 100 foot pole–when you really and truly give up all hope that anything can save you from cause and effect, or impermanence–you bounce. When you step into the abyss–or what looks to be the abyss–the dreadful consequence you were so afraid of doesn’t happen.
Instead, you discover that you are free. You discover that you are the transcendent, the unborn/undying pure awareness, the Christ, the Buddha, the One. This realization is freedom. Then, for a while, you float along in this transcendent state, where there are no problems and no one to have them, because you’re the infinite Oneness that was never born and will never die.
Later, you might come to see that even though that’s who you are, the organism through which you’re experiencing who you are is still subject to impermanence and cause and effect.
Until you decide to actually take that leap, though, what else can you do? Let’s start, then, from the assumption that there really is no escape–even if you’re the Buddha–and that you can choose to surrender to impermanence or fight it, but either way, it will win. True wisdom is seeing things as they really are.
Here you are, then, in a universe over which you have little control, and where everything eventually falls apart, including you. You realize, though, that who you really are is beyond the separate me in a bag of skin you thought you were. Still though, here you are, living (for now) in the relative world, a world of cause and effect and impermanence.
I’ve often said that awareness provides the solution to all problems. Let me explain how that’s the case even in this situation. I’ve also said that awareness gives you choice. So look at it this way. If you are caught in cause and effect (which you are), and you’re unaware, you’ll be likely to unknowingly place yourself in situations where the consequences–the effect–involve getting something you don’t want. You’ll find yourself with outcomes you don’t want, with people you don’t want, in situations you don’t want to be in.
If you have enough awareness, though, you can see that web of cause and effect before you act. You can see the inevitable karma (to use the Eastern philosophy word) you create whenever you think a certain thought, make a certain picture in your head, make a certain decision, or take a certain action. With enough awareness, no matter how complex the situation, you’ll see the potential consequences, and act accordingly. You’ll enter into life choosing the consequences you experience.
To the degree that you’re unaware, you’re quite likely to step into one situation after another, think one thought after another, make one decision after another, which leads to suffering, both for you and for others.
So while you can’t do anything about the fact that as a human being you’re subject to cause and effect, you can choose–if you’re aware–what consequences you create, what situations you enter into, what thoughts you think, what decisions you make and which actions you take. Though consequences are inevitable, you do have a choice about which consequences you generate.
The gift of awareness is choice. Remain unaware, though, and you have little or no choice. When you’re unaware, life seems to “just happen,” and some of what happens is unnecessarily painful. Suffering is built into life, due to cause and effect and the impermanence of all things. From these two there is no escape. None. The super-aware human being surrenders to impermanence, because all other choices involve delusion–the delusion that you can do something about it.
The super-aware human being also sees how cause and effect works and, in that awareness, CHOOSES how he becomes involved in it. Knowing that all thoughts and all actions have consequences, he chooses the thoughts and actions whose consequences he’s willing to experience. I choose, for instance, to be emotionally involved with Centerpointe. Because Centerpointe, like everything else, is impermanent, I know it will change and eventually fall apart. I also choose to be attached to my wife, Denise; to my daughter, Brisa, and to my son, Evan.
To be unattached to these things would make life, well, lifeless. I also know that this attachment generates consequences, but being aware, I can see them. I also know that everything I’m attached to is a choice I’ve made, with full knowledge of what I’m getting myself into. Without awareness, though, these things are not a choice.
The only thing that really gives you a leg-up in this world is awareness. Ironically, you are that awareness. That’s the only thing that was never born and never dies. That Pure Awareness, the real you, is beyond impermanence, and beyond cause and effect. The body you’re in, however, and the concepts and ideas that make up who you think you are–what I’ve called your Map of Reality, or what could be called “the separate self”–are all impermanent, and are all subject to cause and effect.
This is why Holosync is so important. Holosync creates awareness in a way I’ve never seen anything else do. As you become more aware, you start to see how you’ve been unknowingly creating the karma, the consequences, that you’ve been experiencing. The more aware you become, the more clearly you see this. And the more you see it, the more you automatically know the most resourceful thing to do in each moment.
Zen master Genpo Roshi makes a distinction between the human part of you, the part that is subject to impermanence and cause and effect, and the being part of you, the pure awareness that is beyond these. Ultimately, while you’re here, in a body, as a living thing (a “sentient being,” as they say in Buddhism), you are both human and being. The idea, then, is to integrate your humanness with your beingness, to transcend, and at the same time include, both. Genpo calls the result of this integration “the one who consciously chooses to be a human being.”
I’m not going to tell you to surrender to impermanence, because you won’t do it until you’re truly convinced that there’s no other choice. No one takes that first step off the 100 foot pole until they have no choice, though sometimes you fall without intending to. I am going to tell you, however, to do everything you can to become more aware. In my opinion, that means meditating with Holosync every day.
Another tool I’ve create to help you with this process are my Life Principles Integration Process online courses. These courses show you, among other things, where to direct that awareness in order to create the greatest amount of choice. (You can learn more about these courses–which, considering what you get and how you will change, are ridiculously inexpensive by going to www.centerpointe.com/change. You can also listen to a free preview lesson at www.centerpointe.com/life/preview. (And, until April 15th, the price is much lower.)
I would also strongly recommend that if you are really interested in your psychological and spiritual growth that you bend Heaven and Earth to attend one of the weekend workshops Genpo Roshi and I have been offering. The next one will be in Vancouver, B.C., on June 27-28. These workshops are the fast-track to waking up, and they are extremely affordable (greatly reduced price). To register, go to www.centerpointe.com/bigmind.
Alan Watts used to say that from the moment of your birth, you’re in free-fall. Clutching at the other things falling alongside you isn’t going to help. While there might not be any escape from impermanence and cause and effect, there is a way to enjoy the ride, and to be much more in charge of what happens during your plunge to the bottom. Awareness is the key.
Keep watching, and be well.
Ok Bill,
Near the beginning of the blog post you start to ask, isn’t being a human being quite weird, I mean we are just
“on this spinning rock ball, in the middle of endlessly vast space, in a thin and fragile protected environment absolutely necessary to us if we’re to stay alive. We come into the world, and then, after an undetermined amount of time, we’re gone. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
“(Actually, if you think about it, it would be more accurate to say that we come OUT of the world, like an apple comes out of an apple tree, but that’s another story, for another day.)
“doesn’t it strike you that this whole business of being a person is quite weird? I mean, what’s it all about? Why is it happening? Is there any purpose to it? If so, what is it?
So I have to say, that before you suggested that this experience (life) was very weird, I actually saw it as very normal.
Seeing things as weird or normal depends on the context your comparing the thing to.
So one notion I would suggest to you Bill, is that your inventing a problem, and infact convincing people they have a problem, before you reveal that your solution is to help them either see outside the problem, or to realize the problem was just an illusion in the first place, yes they still have the problem, but once they accept that it isn’t a problem anymore, it’s just the way it is.
Ironically though, many people just accept that things are the way the way they are, and what I propose is that you are consciously convincing yourself that you are saving people from a problem they know about, while unconsciously making the problem by informing people of it.
Now, if that’s possibly true, or not true, then ask yourself why you begin blog posts describing a problem?
Perhaps describing a problem is creating a problem, where none was before?
and your so sure that everyone has this problem,
but the reality could be that your just warning trees about the dangers of air, and then after selling your product you tell them not to worry about the air anymore, because they were born in air, and can’t do anything about it because they are just trees, and since it doesn’t matter they can find other things to focus on, and essentially your erasing the problem, that you introduced in the first place by believing it to be there.
It’s one thing if the mud teacher tells me my mud pond can grow lily’s, lotus’s, and even gives me seeds to start my flower garden.
It’s another thing to have a generous person, drain the mudpond, build a school, to bring literacy to the poor, to train strong work ethics in young people, to teach people trades, so they can grow an economy, operate a business, run a city, then a government, and return the favor one day by sponsoring development in some other mud garden.
That’s the work of heroes, and it’s being a hero that makes life worth living, that brings people together, in mutual love, and eternal happiness.
Meditation is the path to letting everything be ok, but it doesn’t make you a hero. Not in my book.
FROM BILL: Unfortunately for you, no one is reading your book.
I describe a problem all humans have, and know they have. I am merely telling them that what they think is a problem is only a problem if they struggle against it. You have a problem with that?
choosing the consequences translates into choosing risks
contrast that with the lesson that belief-s translate into behavior, and results.
for example if I believe that every fifth time the fridge is opened a throat slitting tiger leaps out, then I might not open the fridge at all,
likewise, if I believe I’m at constant risk, then your right, it would make taking risks by choices seem a lot easier, thanks to the contrast of moving what your focusing on to a different context for comparison.
the converse is that, if I have great faith, the polarity of great doubt, I might also take great risks, but think of it as using belief as a tool, to choose my rewards, instead of choosing my consequences.
belief is a tool, and an illusion, and nothing then can make me happy or sad, except that believing makes it so.
so how does one reconcile faith with inevitable consequence?
its because we have no choice?
faith is a method of holding in awareness
doubt is a method of letting go in awareness
so it seems to me, that great doubt and great faith should both be practiced, one after another.
So the mind gets used to polarity shifting, and combining, being afraid and happy at the same time is called excitement!
Why shouldn’t practice great combinations of opposite notions as well?
my twitter is /podabla
FROM BILL: You are correct! Great Doubt and Great Faith are two sides of the very same coin.
LOL….I GET NOW!!! THANKS AGAIN BILL
Good post, but I think our situation is even ‘worse’ than Bill suggests: awareness is not going to last either. It is gone when the body is gone. It’s truly ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and there’s no awareness in ashes or dust.
Of course it is very useful to be more aware while we are alive, but the belief that awareness is not time bound is simply the result of giving excessive importance to the first person perspective approach to Emptiness, to use Ken Wilber’s terminology. No, nirguna Brahman is nirguna Brahman.
Also, denying the existence of a real self is just another way to avoid the force of the conclusion that I am going to die: if I can convince myself that my sense of self is an illusion then obviously it’s ‘death’ is meaningless and need not be feared. I escape by convincing myself that what I really am is awareness, which is not going to die. And calling it Awareness, (or Consciousness or the Self) is trickery, just another way to be inauthentic and escape the conclusion that I am going to die.
There really is no escape, because if there is anything that is not time bound, it is Emptiness, which is not an I, not a You, and not an It. Death is not called Mahasamadhi for nothing.
That said, it does appear that the future of humanity lies in the direction of the cyborg, i.e. there will be extended humans who live indefinitely long lives (which is not the same as forever and definitely not the same as being outside of time).
Wilber even thinks that these extended humans will come to be aware of another state ‘beyond’ the Non-Dual — the Cyber Non-Dual, I think he calls it. An interesting possibility! My guess would be that he is right, and that this new state will be the result of a blurring of the difference between life and death, so that the nature of awareness itself would be fundamentally affected.
But again, a good post, and lots of good comments too. I am going to remember that Ice Cream Koan!
FROM BILL: You treat “no-self” as if it is a belief that you can either adopt or not. Some speak of it because they read about it or heard someone else talk about it. Others speak from experience. And, even those people (those whom I know personally) are still concerned about death of the body-mind. Unless, of course, they are stuck in the transcendent and still need to integrate it with the relative. In a way, the point of the post was to say that we make a problem of what-is by resisting it. If life is impermanent, there are consequences to that. If you resist it, there are even more consequences, and though the first set of consequences are inevitable, the second set aren’t.
Finally, are you really going to need awareness after death?
Hi Bill,
Thanks for responding to my previous post about working with shadows. I don’t have the funds to use a facilitator at this time, so I’ve decided to do the best I can on my own. I’ve chosen to speak from my voices in writing, so far this has proven to be the most potent method for me.
Doing this exercise has given me some incredible insights. I’ve noticed that in most cases when I speak from a voice, there’s another voice behind that voice, and another voice behind that voice etc…and that actually all these different “voices” are all one voice! Something else that occurred to me was what Eugene Gendlin said about a felt sense making “steps”. That’s exactly what this feels like as I discover all these other voices emerging from the surface voices.
Doing this shadow work has proven to be highly beneficial for me as I have been experiencing some tremendous upheaval from my use of Holosync. I would appreciate your advise on something though. I recently visited another personal growth site that discussed dealing with shadows, here’s an excerpt:
“We integrate our shadows by playing pretend, like children do, with different behaviors. We do this in environments in which there are no real-world consequences. As we play safely with our shadows, we integrate their power. ”
In my current situation, I’m running a small business and it’s sometimes difficult to find time in the day to write from these voices, and depending on who is around me it’s not always safe to speak orally from them either. So how else could I “integrate” my shadows?
Thank you for your time,
Darren
FROM BILL: I don’t really know anything about the other site you mentioned.
You can reown a shadow in an instant, but whatever amount of time it takes will be worth it a thousand times over.
Bill I got a question, after all the workshops you have attended, years of holosync, meditation, etc. do you still experience resistance as much now as before ? has it diminished ? I ask because even thought I have had incredible openings I still feel it and even though I realize I am the one creating them, they keep coming.
Also, you recommended Robert Scheinfeld, I am doing his process as an experiment, however he TOTALLY dismisses reality as a complete illusion or hologram, do you agree with him or would you say he is stuck in the 3rd rank ?
FROM BILL: I don’t agree with everything Bob says.
Yes, of course I still experience resistance. Resistance is part of being a human being. You can’t get away from cause and effect, and every action creates an equal and opposite reaction (according to Mr. Isaac Newton). The point is to become aware enough that you see the web of cause and effect so you know what you’re getting into when you think, act, believe, and so on. Otherwise, you get stuck with people and situations you got involved with without awareness of the potential consequences. Then, you suffer consequences you didn’t intend to create or had no idea would happen. This is where most of the typical problems of life (problems with money, relationships, fulfillment, stress, etc.) come from.
You can never totally anticipate all consequences in a situation, but you can anticipate many more of them if you are aware. Some people think they can escape from cause and effect (this is one of the delusions of the Third Rank), but it isn’t possible. Nor would you want to. If you could, there would be no aliveness. Then, for the effects you can’t do anything about, and for the impermanence of all things, which you also can’t do anythign about, you surrender to it. Being human, though, you will always be in resistance to these things to some degree.
i have just been listening to holosync for two weeks and already feel like it is changeing into something within myself that has been there all along and like a seed is growing more and more each day, thank you Bill Harris i am grateful for you making holosync available
Thanks for the post / podcast Bill. I enjoyed it and am contemplating it. BC
As Holosync, and your timely reminders keep us from being stressed out! there is an additional way to clear away the old debris from our thinking/feeling egoic minds. — http://www.mindbridge-loa.com/hooponopono.html
It has been difficult for me to know whether the improvement in my life is due to Holosync, or Ho’oponopono. As a research project, since I started Holosync a little after starting Ho’oponopono, I can’t separate identify either as a separate cause. But, I can say, that together they are wondrous!
I send you thanks and love every day!
- Nancy
Hi Bill,
I feel you have explained extremly clearly the world of impermanence. From your words I can achieve to the conclusion that everything that is a phenomenon – an object – is submited to impermanence and to the law of cause-efect (so are for instances our bodies, our emotions, our concepts, our beliefs … or in another level for instances a house, a tree, a mountain, the earth, the moon, the phisical universe … all this is impermanent and changes)
On the other hand you mention “That Pure Awareness, the real you, is behind impermanence, and behind cause and effect” – and I feel this is completly true. But the question is what is behind the Pure Awareness ? Allow me to express my view: none is behind the awareness, any object is behind the awareness …there is Pure Awareness and that is all. And this marvellous Emptiness that is behind Awareness is the real me/the real you/it is the True Nature of all human beings, now – This Emptiness does not change (it is not an object), it has not a begining and has not an end, it is permanent.
I do believe (this is one of my beliefs) that focusing deeply attention/awareness into my heart I can achieve to find this Great Emptiness (that lives now, hiden by thoughts, beliefs, emotians … and all kind of psicological phenomena).
*
Thank you so much for your words. I enjoyed specialy – “The only thing that really gives you a leg-up in this world is awareness. Ironically, you are that awareness. That’s the only thing that was never born and never dies. That Pure Awareness, the real you, is beyond impermanence, and beyond cause and effect”.
In fact I do believe that when I am Pure Awareness I am Empty.
Allow me to express my congratulations for your wonderfull work.
Best regards,
Jorge
I feel the need to write although there really is nothing to say. You covered it.
People thank you or argue their point with you. Neither matters much — arguing for the validity of a road map or an experience, I mean.
I often recall previous existences, or have visions of other worlds and the beings that live there. I have experienced all sorts of things in my life from the mundane to the truly bizarre.
I have also had the disconcerting realization that mundane memories I have are flat wrong — although I have strong and “accurate” memories of the events, the objective evidence indicated that my memories were dead wrong.
So, if I can be dead wrong about mundane things, I have to think that I can also be wrong about the esoteric and bizarre things for which I also have strong and “accurate” memories.
These realizations have caused me to become highly skeptical of all experience, all knowledge claims, and all of my epistemic tools (ways of knowing). And, yet I am even skeptical of skepticism — because at the end of the day, that doesn’t seem to help much.
It seems better to provisionally believe, or at least accept, certain beliefs as true. For me, the things I provisionally believe are those that are experiential or logical (inductive or deductive). It seems that transience, cause and effect is axiomatic and that every attempt to overcome these are distractions — Erich Fromme would probably say that the attempt to free oneself from these is merely an escape from freedom.
Of course, since I am also skeptical that one can accurately predict future events from past events, I could also be wrong about the nature of transience and cause and effect; I might stumble upon a way out. And, wouldn’t that be cool?
So for me there still remains a balance between accepting that there is no escape from slavery. I have come to this conclusion as a consequence of living through all previous attempts. It also occurs to me that it could just as easily be that I just haven’t encountered the right causal factors for freedom to arise.
But, then again, what would freedom look like anyway?
It seems an axiom that as a hunter that it is best to know your quarry, where the best hunting is, the territory and conditions to be traversed, and your own strengths and limitations. If you don’t know at least these things the chances for a successful hunt are limited at best.
This is all so true. In Maltese, we have a proverb to the effect that “he who spits at the heavens, will dirty his face with the same spittle…”
Hi Mark L.
I found your post particularly interesting.
I would suggest: Be skeptical even to YOURSELF!
“WHO is skeptical?” is the really interesting question in the end…!
I started using Holosync in late December 2008. By the end of March I had submitted the manuscript for a book I have been playing around with for almost twenty five years. It is now published. This program works!
Dear Bill , as you are advocating and promoting “There is NO escape” from cause and effect, whatever you do, forget it, no hope and I know it. This is fine as it is “True for you”. In fact you are telling us (at least those who are reading this article) we should be in “Apathy ” and I think that’s not OK. Each one has the right to experience life and find out the truth for himself, and not before hand being told it’s all to no avail, and I do consider this as not ethical, considering the position (Teacher) you hold.
Above is beside the point of being right or wrong in your statement “There is no escape. This may be a subject of a later exchange in viewpoints.
FROM BILL: Huh? It’s true for everyone, Tony. Cause and effect exists for everyone and everything in the universe. Check out Newton’s laws of motion. I am not suggesting apathy at all. Where in the world would you get that idea? I’m suggesting AWARENESS and action. It’s just that there’s little or nothing you can do about how you’re affected by gravity, the sun, cosmic rays, the weather, the earth’s magnetic field, and all the other physical happenings in the universe, and there’s little you can do about the actions of the billions of other people on earth. That doesn’t mean you should be apathetic about it, though. If you’re aware, you’ll be able to do what can be done, whatever that is. In many cases, though, there’s nothing you can do. If there is an earthquake, the earth will move no matter what you do. If there is a war, there will be bullets and bombs, no matter what you do. To think that you are going to control everything is delusion. There is no escape from cause and effect. You can escape from certain effects, but not from all effects.
I fully agree with you, but as long as the being is still identifying him/herself with matter,energy, space and time he/she will be a subject to the law of cause and effect. But, the moment he/she becomes in absolute sense free from any identification, he’s no more a passenger of the merry-go-round, there’s nothing there anymore to have an effect upon, but what’s after this is a matter of speculation. Although it is my consideration that that step can be made once you have reached the awareness of being aware of that point of decision, but first we have to move from the perifery to the center of the merry-go-round. This concept I had in mind when I wrote earlier comment.
Holosync can assist that process. the name centerpointe ?
FROM BILL: I would stop speculating. How do you know that cause and effect ends when you stop identifying with matter, energy, space and time? Sounds like a speculation to me.
First a footnote I forgot to add on my last comment of how I arrived at in using the word “Apathy”. The statement “There is no Escape” means without wrappings in my view being locked into a space, mind, body, thought or whatever you can think of and with no possibility offered one way or other to get out of it and accepting the fact that it is true. Void of interest to come out. Emotion/state of mind, apathy on getting out.
Comment: You can only become affected by those things you have identified yourself with one way or other. My viewpoint, when you cease to excist as an Identity this game is ended for you, left only the state of awareness free from effects as there is nothing to reflect upon.
But I don’t think it is possible to escape from awareness.
FROM BILL: MY comment about being caught in the web of cause and effect, with no escape, is no different than if I said that you are subject to gravity, and there is no escape, or that you must eat or you will die, and there is no escape from that. All events have or create consequences, and as a human you are subject to these consequences. The sun shines, and you are subject to the effects of that sunshine. People take actions, and you are subject to the effects of those actions. Apathy has nothing to do with it. If you hit a nail with a hammer, there are consequences to the nail. The nail’s attitude about it has nothing to do with it.
As I got the feeling that I was getting nowhere, and not getting through, I decided to read the whole article anew, and right up to the end I could find myself fully in what you said and in particular in the following passage, quote “That pure awareness, the real you, is beyond permanence, and byond cause and effect” And this is exactly what I have been trying to say, this is transformation, or an escape as some will say.
My blunder I missed this in the first read of your article
No further comments to prevent misunderstoods
I wish to offer my perspective: I find that the purpose of life here is to become worn out of the impermanence, so that, I seek the eternal. Experiencing the frustrations of the temporary motivates me in a healthy sort of way to seek the permanent, the eternal; and for me, that comes about through engaging my relationship with the Source, the Father Eternal. Just a direct and personal relationship with Him via the spark of Him which dwells right directly within my own mind and heart and beyond of course. Going beyond the noise of my mind is only part of the story, the purpose; relationship with the Nameless, lets call it Father of Us all, evolves me into maturing my own personality as an individuality of the Source and also builds for me a unique, personal spiritual realization relationship.
I keep coming back to the impermanance thing. I guess because what goes on with most of us as human beings is an unwillingness to accept the impermanance of everything or in other words a fear of death. Isn’t this whole spiritual awakening or journey another way of trying to make sense of this or at least make it less fearful? There are times, especially when meditating with Holosync, that it appears just so. The realisation that our habitual way of being and thinking is not etched in stone is totally liberating and death is not so fearful, it is merely another stage in our
evolution.
FROM BILL: Everything in this world is impermanent, and yes, most explanations of what being human is all about are attempts to deal with that. However, while the individual things and processes are impermanent, the entire whatever-it-is that makes up the whole isn’t impermanent. If it “ended”. where would it go? If it had a beginning, where did it come from? What existed before? What would exist after?
Since you are the entire interrelationship of the whole thing–which will go on in some way or other–realizing that (not intellectually, but experientially) frees you from fear of the impermanence of the relative world. If someone is seeking that realization to escape impermanence for the same reason humans do all the other things they do to try to escape, then the spiritual seeking is no different than anything else. Once realized, though, whatever the original motive, you see things the way they really are (and, more important, who you really are).
Thanks Bill. I guess the key word is experientially.
Bill Do you have any facing fear related holosync cd’s or dvd’s. I can manifest but I seam to always give into the fear in the end no matter how successful I am money,relationally,emotionally.spiritual. I have used the time line and thought that I was very successful, but the fear always seams to come back. Thanks Alemenia
FROM BILL: This is because you aren’t clear about how you create the fear. You need to learn to observe your mind so you can see how you do it.
could you explain where fear comes from and If you have any exercises. I do the time line I can even do the time line in crisis situations in the now. I am very succesfull at it. Should I just keep doing the time line and look down and going down into the situation until the fear goes away? will it go away, and why is fear so powerful?Do I possible need additional help to get past all the fear?
FROM BILL: Fear is how you alert yourself that there is danger. It is a useful emotion. If you associate certain things with danger, even though they aren’t really dangerous, you will make yourself feel afraid when it isn’t useful. You do this by making internal representations of what you don’t want.
[...] News Flash: There’s No Escape, It’s All about Awareness and Where are you going? And Why? (Pretending like crazy that what [...]