Until it becomes clear what theme of thoughts keep you poorly defined and disconnected from your essence, those thinking themes continue, unhampered, habitual, consistent, perpetual, and the status quo remains and even worsens.

The ideals you hold dear, the topics you feel strongly about, until you are grounded in your non-resistant Self, are the bars of your prison cell, the framework of your forgetting.

You exist outside the field of your beliefs, especially the ones you feel are important.

Peace for now
Roger

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Acceptance is the absence of non-acceptance

Seeing yourself as a seperate independent 'doer' of the thoughts, feelings and emotions which arises in you is understandable.

However, understandable as it may be, this view of oneself as the 'doer' is nonetheless akin in principle, to the narrow focussed view of seeing the hammer and firing pin in a gun as being the cause of the bullet being launched.

This applies to seeing the other as a separate independent 'doer', and it applies not only to thoughts, emotions and feelings, but also to words, actions, behaviours and habits as well.

This is important to consider because it is the belief in personal doership which underpines all forms of human suffering.

Happiness (peace of mind in daily living) sets in when guilt, blame, pride, worry and anxiety, expectation and attachment to outcomes, no longer have a basis on which to arise.

Those forms of suffering can only fall away if life is known as a whole, and attitudinally no-one is seen as the 'doer', but rather we are all attitudinally seen as instruments through which life is happening.

Peace for now.
Roger

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You can continue to vehemently defend your position on this and that in life, feeling that the opposite view is absolutely invalid, and suffer.

Is it not the tragedy of illusion to see the other as the cause of our suffering?

The less connected and grounded we are to our core, the greater the sense that it's external circumstances that are the problem in life, and the more invested we become in external change, and by default the higher the propensity to find people to blame.

The more ingrained this attitude that it's outer circumstances that need to change in order for life to be liveable in peace and harmony, the greater the internal uncomfortableness with oneself and the other, meaning the less connected we are to our core.

The above is not a prescription, but just a description.

Peace for now
Roger

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Internet in 4 U.S. states has been cut.

'THEY' have a very well thought out plan.

I'm now more certain than ever that 'they' - the ones who want us all to turn inward and come to know ourselves truly, have realized that sticking us on the cushion (couch) for extended periods is simply not enough.

They are now going to even more extraordinary lengths to remove obstacles on our path, all for our own good to aid in the process of self discovery.

This is a certainty, no doubt about it! 😉

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The suffering we experience in life is a result of a sense of self that has been established by life, through no fault of our own, a sense of self that feels defined by outcomes and circumstance.

This sense of self has the ability to cover up the core of who we are.

As this psychological self is enquired into and subsequently weakens, a connection to Source is established and that manifests as an unwavering peace even in the face of adversity.

That is the real gift available in this life.

A movement from suffering to peace of mind can happen at any time, it's available for everyone, however, first life needs to put in place an earnestness that makes this change the priority. Not a priority for the "doer" that is going to win at this, make it happen, but rather an earnestness that transcends doership and attachment to outcomes - when this happens, this is grace.

Otherwise we will continue seeking happiness in outcomes and remain frustrated.

Peace for now
Roger

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In non-duality, the explanation given for the arising of this life experience, is that it's all an arising or imagination in God - Brahman is all, there are not two. In other words, all there is is God, God in nature is Awareness or Consciousness, and the whole universe arises in and is not separate from God, is made of God, is made of awareness.

Well, there's no denying that the experience of life is exactly that, an experience arising in consciousness. Without consciousness/or awareness the experience wouldn't exist, and it's obvious with just a little enquiry that the experience (content) and awareness are not two.

However, could this phenomenon, this experience of life that we know as an experience arising in consciousness, be explained by other than the model put forward by Advaita teachings?

In short, the answer is a big YES.

What we know is life from within the experience, what we can't know definitively is where it comes from, and there is most definitely more than one model that does a good job of holding water in explaining what the Source of the experience is (IE, it's not just the Advaita model that is valid, however, as a side note, it's worth noting that if you examine any of the valid models, you can see how the principles of Advaita (that the experience of life is a singularity and arises in consciousness) holds for all of them.

This post is not going to layout the various viable models that could explain this experience of life (for the purpose of the post, it's enough to understand that several theoretical 'models of best fit' can explain the existence of the 'experience' we know as life).

Well done if you've stuck with me this far, now to my main point...

As above where there can be more than one possible explanation for a single phenomenon, it's quite possible that the number of infected people in Italy is closer to 2,000,000 right now (rather than 60,000 reported) and that the fatalities that we are seeing are those associated with an infected population much larger that the reported figure of 60,000. There are reasons why the number might actually be closer to 2,000,000 and not the reported figure of 60,000 and most of it comes down to the fact that not everyone in the country has been tested, yet, all those that die will not slip through the cracks.

If this is the case (ie, currently 2,000,000 infected in Italy) the fatality rate based on the current 6000 deaths is closer to 0.3% (as opposed to a fatality rate of close to 10% as the surface assessment of the figures in Italy would suggest, now nobody thinks the fatality rate is actually 10%, but we also don't know that 2,000,000 have/had the virus). And, if it is the case that 2,000,000 are infected then clearly out of the 0.3% that will die those most at risk are the elderly and those with existing pre-conditions.

It could also be argued that 50% or more of those that die from Coronavirus would be otherwise killed by influenza because they are the same compromised population that both illnesses are most devastating on. This means that both influenza and coronavirus are competing for the same fatalities, with coronavirus adding some additional fatalities to those that influenza would be responsible for if coronavirus wasn't the killer (but maybe those additional deaths are only those that influenza would have claimed in the following year).

The main point is that, there are currently several viable explanations for the number of fatalities we are seeing, and at the moment with the limited data available we can't be sure which one it is.

Hopefully it is that Italy currently has an infected population of 2,000,000 or more, many of whom are asymptomatic or have very mild symptoms. It follows that, if China's fatalities were actually 3500 as reported, China's infection numbers would have been above 1,000,000 rather than 80,000 official cases, this anomaly also because of the limitations of initial testing.

Once again, the point here is, that at the moment we don't know whether the infection numbers in China, Italy and other countries are in the millions or just in the tens of thousands as the official test numbers suggest, or somewhere in between, and we must be open to the range of possibilities as they all hold water. The official WHO fatality rate is between 2-3%, but no one really believes it's that high because the numerator in the equation (the number of people with the illness) is absolutely understated because of the limited testing that has been carried out.

Critical thinking (and I believe this is an essential aspect of effective spiritual investigation and enquiry) looks at a situation directly and first hand, and tries to find possible explanations without becoming fixated on only one possibility at the expense of other perspectives. Critical thinking is the absence of cognitive bias.

So, keep an open mind, investigate what's available in front of you, and as the investigation accumulates more and more information and data from your own experience, then ignorance (that which doesn't hold true) falls away and we're left with the actuality.

The good news is that a virus like this is an objectively observable phenomenon so the data will become clear soon enough, and with it the obvious explanation of the several potential ones which currently exist. About three more weeks of extensive testing should tell us something definitive.

Let's keep our fingers crossed that the virus has spread much wider than the current numbers indicate (seemingly ironically this would be good news), if that's the case it means much fewer deaths overall because we have a lower fatality rate, and that also means the economy will return to normal very quickly and people won't experience significant financial pain.

Psychological fear grabs hold of a story and runs with it as if it's absolute, and in doing this we panic and feel anxiety unnecessarily. Included in the narrative that sets in is a very definitive sense of self, a vulnerable self that is heavily threatened by the story that has been conjured up - hence the anxiety and fear.

Our stories about ourselves are never absolutely true, we need to come to know ourself outside of our psychological projections of the past and future. When we do, we'll find that we deal with what needs to be dealt with in the moment, while maintaining peace of mind - this is our birth right and what mystics have been pointing at for thousands of years.

We don't ever know much for absolute certain, what is undeniable though, is that we exist right now. So, whenever possible try to hold any concepts as relative, which is what they always are, this way they don't get turned into rigid beliefs about yourself, and this way of relating to concepts will allow your essence to shine through. If on the other hand, we hold the concepts as a belief, that has to create uncomfortableness, because what we really are on the inside is completely undefinable, and a belief is fully defined.

So, back to the virus, don't relax on the social distancing just yet, we still don't know what the fatality rate actually is, if it's less than 0.2% then we'll all be getting back to normal life soon, accepting that this is a fairly mild threat to human life. However if the actual fatality rate turns out to be somewhere above 0.6% it will be important to flatten the curve with more than mild additional efforts, and we'll be hoping for a vaccine.

I hope that what's being pointed out here is clear, if the fatalities can be explained relative to a much higher than reported number of infections then this is great news. In that scenario we must be careful as a society, not to unconsciously give up too many of our privileges unnecessarily.

Always keep an open mind, that helps us see 'what is' more clearly.

Peace for now.
Roger

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It's an understandable human trait to get dragged into a mental narrative about what we may have lost, what might have happened, what we may not have in the future, why is this happening now, and so on.

I understand that this is bound to happen, and to some extent, as a means of getting us to deal with practical arrangements certain thinking, in measured forms, can be useful, not all thinking should be underestimated.

Notice however, that often thinking about the past and future can become obsessive and move beyond thinking that helps us act decisively, it gets us stuck and drags us down.

When thinking about what has been lost or what may not be in the future happens, keep in mind that your most valuable asset is your own very real, undeniable, formless, innate existence right now, an existence which persists outside of the mental narrative. It is the felt sense I Am, I undeniably exist right now.

This is your most precious asset. It's your real home.

This is Presence, and it shines. Abide there whenever possible, and know directly that you still exist now, untethered on the inner level by outer circumstance, and you always will.

These are challenging times, but this too shall pass. Whenever available, utilize your greatest asset, it's unchanging.

Peace for now
Roger

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