Buddha-nature and the self-image

How long shall they kill our prophets

while we stand aside and look?

(Bob Marley)

I was really thinking about what I was going to say on my next podcast interview, concerning my latest writing.

As I was thinking about it, I realized two things.

First, what I was trying to say was so simple I could say all I had to talk about in under half a minute. So what is there to talk about, really? Interview?

Second, what I wanted to say may not have been so clear in my latest post.

So this morning I am getting behind the computer again, first, to see if I can say what I want to say in more than one sentence, second, to try to crystallize my message more clearly.

So here we go!

Imagine you have a carrot who likes himself.

Who likes carrots.

Now a fly comes along, and he cuts away a piece of the carrot and buries the rest of it where the carrot cannot see himself.

Then the fly goes to sit on the carrot and says ‘you can have this piece of carrot if you…’.

It is the same with all of mankind.

They are all carrots listening to the fly in order to find a piece of…

Themselves?

The fly is the ego, tricking us forever into listening and obeying its wishes and commands. The plague of the pressures of the mind.

And the piece of carrot is the feeling of bliss, of deep and deep happiness and fulfillment we ‘will’ find, when we have listened to the pressuring voice in our heads, the symbolico-imaginary, showing us what we have to do in order to get a piece of happiness.

And the big buried carrots that we are, is our Buddha-nature, our souls that are bliss and fulfillment by nature, like all of creation, like the entire cosmos, like the puppy and the kitten, like the fish in the deep waters and the eagles in their high and dry skies.

And the whole charade is this, that we do not need to do anything, we do not have to obey the ego and listen to the mind at all!

We just have to know ourselves.

Then we will find the biggest carrot we can imagine, not just a piece of it, not just a blink of it, somewhere far away where maybe it will become reality if we realize this or that, but unconditionally, straight away, right now and forever. Unwavering, stable, ever present.

Unestranged.

So the carrot, it is our nature, it is our nature that the ego has captured and made us forget, made us lose, inside, and now it holds it like a promise it will never fulfill, in order to manipulate us endlessly in its own favor and interest.

And the first and most important of its interests, is that we never find the carrot within. For if we did, it would lose its power, it would lose its leverage, it would be gone and disappear.

We have talked about this before, in a light vs darkness dynamic.

When our light comes to fully shine, the shadow is vanquished.

Like vapor in heat, like dust in the wind.

So this is the whole game, you will be happy.

You will be happy when you have bought that house, you will be happy when you ride that car, you will be happy when you have married that girl, you will be happy when you have lost 50 pounds, you will be happy when you have run another marathon, you will be happy when you find another hit, when you buy another vinyl record, you will be happy when you are a university professor or when you have added another star to your uniform.

You will be happy.

It is a promise.

You can trust me.

Just look at that smile!

And that happiness, that happiness the ego flings before your eyes, isn’t it there right now, isn’t it there, don’t you feel it when you feel it? Then feel it some more, and stay with the feeling, and forget the scale, forget the house, forget the girl, forget the stars. Just forget it, and stay with the feeling.

That’s why drugs are so potent.

They are direct feeling.

You don’t need a big house, you don’t need to be a university professor, you just need a line of coke or a shot of heroin. And there, you are happy.

It is easier, and who is to say that the other way is better?

I don’t know.

I just know you want to be happy.

But the thing is, you don’t need anything to be happy, you just need to be yourself. To know yourself, as the oracle in Delphi said. Know yourself. You are a giant carrot, and you are slaving and bowing all your lives just to get a little piece of it.

Which you never will get.

It will just always be there, right in front of your eyes.

Like in the familiar picture of the donkey driver holding out a stick from which a carrot is hanging. And the mule walks towards the carrot, always just being one stick length away. And in the meantime, the driver is getting where he wants.

But it’s worse!

Maybe the donkey gets the carrot in the end, when the driver has gotten where he wants to get to.

We never get the carrot.

And where did the carrot come from?

The carrot came from us, from our being, from our heart.

It came from our essence and our Self.

Which the ego has caused us to forget, through the primal repression of the mirror stage, where it darkened our light and made it small, in order to live comfortably as a shadow in our ‘psychodynamic’ system.

You can see why the system feels threatened by the mystic.

For the mystic is like a drug pointing straight to your heart.

He makes you forget the job, forget the house, forget the scale, forget the girl and the university position.

And the system is trying to sell you the house, and make you work for it.

And the system is trying to sell you the girl, and make you sweat for it.

And the system is trying to sell you the position, and make you strive for it.

The system is trying to sell you everything, and if you stop buying shit…

Can you realize what a disaster it would be?

How scared the system is of the mystic!

How the economists fear love!

How the devil fears the light.

It is the fear of death, it is the resistance against disappearing, it is the panic the self-image feels of fading. It is the ultimate horror to the self.

For the mind to keep its authority, the ego needs to be in place.

It needs to be strong and stable, not letting through an inch of unwanted light, love and energy. Emotion.

It needs to be uncompromisingly and unconditionally aggressive and killing.

Like the good police.

The unquestionable absence of the soul is what is required for the carrot-trick to work.

And the mystic wants to ruin it all?

He must be evil!

Let’s crucify him!

Quick.

Let’s shoot the guerilla!

Quick.

The system must prevail.

And where do we see the nature of the system, in clinical psychology?

In self-mutilation.

Where we kill our feelings to experience a piece of them.

Where we bury them, in order to dig them up.

That’s exactly the logic of self-mutilation.

If we kill it, it will be there.

It is suicide!

The whole system is suicide.

And with all the waste and pollution resulting from our needs and wants, we should be discovering that right now.

So maybe it’s time for another mystic.

😉

If we kill ourselves, we will be a little bit happy now and then, we can always strive to be happy.

If we know ourselves, we will be a whole lot of happy all the time, without strife ever.

Now what is in the interest of whom?

It is in the interest of the system that we kill ourselves, that we keep ourselves dead.

That we never find the carrot within.

It is in the interest of the knife that we do not love our bodies, and the bliss they are made of.

The bliss of the baby.

I was talking about how the system was only an excuse for the ego to be a killer.

How the law is an excuse for the enforcement.

How logic is only a rationalization for repression.

This whole human world is just an excuse to kill (our) nature.

And in the end, without all the excuses and the rationalizations, what excuse is there to kill anyhow?

And let’s be fair.

If you are a true killer, you do not need an excuse.

Do you, pussy?

Do you need a reason, or do you just like it?

The devil just likes it.

And this whole world, this entire planet is just letting him have his way.

And the economy thrives on it.

And everyone is chasing their dreams, crazy as hell, pushing, pushing, pushing further and I just pray that one day, they will find a piece of themselves.

The peace of their Selves.

Then they will chase no more.

And smile.

And we will be happy.