What is your horror today? Has it already come to mind? I suspect we both saw it in the morning news. Interested in a simple fact to dissolve it? Probably not, I’m not, but here it is anyway. You asked for it by clicking here, so be human enough to accept it. It’s your only real hope.
This doesn’t take a master’s degree. In fact, if you have a master’s degree it’s going to be a lot harder. The truth is simple, not complicated, which makes it so intolerably difficult. It’s unbelievably simple, in fact, we having been trained to see everything but it. But don’t give up hope. Together we can reinforce the truth in our minds and overcome this world. From ACIM workbook lesson 2:
“I have given everything I see all the meaning that it has for me.”
Paraphrased from Krishnamurti:
“The real can only be understood by understanding ‘what is’. It cannot be understood if there is any condemnation or identification (i.e. if our mind escapes from the ‘what is’ by accepting or rejecting what we see). The mind that is always condemning or identifying cannot understand; it can only understand that within which it is caught.”
A thought from Marshall Rosenberg’s ‘Non Violent Communication’: ‘Observation without Evaluation’.
This is essentially the same message from three very high sources. I mean really, really high. In my estimation they can be implicitly trusted.
Facts are facts. We are brutal ruthless beings that kill each other. That’s a fact. We create the horror around this with our own mind’s interpretation of these events. Which is not to say that they are not true horrors… they are. At least to our ego minds….which have cunningly devised this system so that it appears that we cannot possibly question it. But just step back dispassionately for a moment if you can and you may see that this is a closed loop system from which there is no escape. Why would we do that to ourselves? What are we hiding from?
According to the teachers who have gone before us through the ages, the escape is simple, but incredibly difficult due to our unwillingness to see it.
Can we see that the observance of any event is followed by our virtually instant evaluation of it….which is based entirely our past memories.
The event itself is not ‘horrifying’. It is our interpretation of it that is. This happens so fast, this process is so ruthlessly and violently etched into our neurons and beaten into our social consciousness that this slick mental maneuver is de facto invisible to most of us. We simply are not willing to see our minds in operation, having preventivly (I’ve just created that word, so if can’t be spelled wrong in spite of your evaluation) focused them outward on events.
If we can create an awareness of this tiny gap between observation and evaluation, if we can ‘look without naming’ as Krishmurti alludes to, then we have created a gap through which we can ultimately rise above the battlefield.
Good luck. Your mind will quickly forget this. Your only hope is in remembering it. Start with a small bit of kindness for yourself. I’m going to get some chocolate.