The Illusion Of Suffering Part 4

Many people end up telling themselves 'It's all over. The story of my life is beyond repair.'

The thing is...the 'story' forms in the current moment and reflects emotional states. Human life is like a bunch of movie scenes that nobody is making and nobody is directing since humans do not have free will and are mere dream entities.

All you are looking at is a mirror that continuously shows various emotional states.

If the emotions change, the 'frangmented disjointed movie scenes' will change too. There is no logic, continuity, depth in these human non-stories. All they do is reflect instantaneous emotional states.

What you think your life story is, is not true vision. It is delusion. Hallucination.

"Vision already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now." ACIM Lesson 023.

Reactions in the mind-body should be observed as these statements are read. An unseen layer of tension and resistance may be seen as this blog entry is read.
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Real comfort can come from nowhere except from deep within.

And it is ever present.

The 'Buddha within.' is always at peace. The deep, calm, serious, peaceful person who is reading these words...

The Buddha within is your default state. Always was.

'Buddha in the Veins'.



'Buddha in My Blood'.



And to all those of you who are suffering very badly...

Here's to the beautiful wonderous dream...which is already unfolding in your life, but you're not able to see it currently due to heavy hallucinations induced by horrible feelings floating in your vicinity...

(Olivia Newton John - Magic)

Dust In The Wind

Kansas sings 'All we are is dust in the wind'....

We are not even dust in the wind actually.

Some facts about our existence.

1. We live for 80-90 years, the universe is approximately 13 billion years old.

2. We are inconsequential on the cosmic scale. Take a look at the following animation, made by using images from rense.com.

The Sun's diameter is 109 times that of the earth....i.e. its volume is 109*109*109=1.3 million times the volume of the earth.

You need 1.3 million earths to fill up the volume of the Sun!

The above graphic shows that the Sun is invisible on a scale on which Antares (photo 5) is a supergiant. Antares' diameter is 700 times the diameter of the Sun...i.e. its volume is 700*700*700=343 million times that of the Sun.

i.e. You need 343 million Suns to fill up the volume of Antares!

Let us look at some more facts.

A star named "VY Canis Majoris" has the largest diameter out of all known stars, 1800 to 2100 times that of the Sun.

i.e. You need 9.3 billion Suns to fill up VY Canis Majoris!

Let us look at some other facts.

A star named "LBV 1806-20" , located approx. 40,000 light-years from the Sun, is 38 million times brighter than the Sun.

i.e. you need to put together 38 million Suns to get the brightness of one LBV 1806-20!

If the Sun is as bright as a 1 watt bulb........LBV 1806-20 is as bright as a 38 million watt bulb!

Despite its phenomenal brilliance , LBV 1806-20 is virtually invisible from the solar system. Its distance from us is so huge that its light gets obscured on the way.

The distances within our galaxy are so huge that even a star that shines brighter than 38 million Suns is invisible to us!

Antares, VY Canis Majoris and LBV 1806-20 are just three stars.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has 400 billion stars...

And the Milky Way is just ONE tiny galaxy among more than 130 billion galaxies in the known universe.

Total number of stars in the universe is estimated to be: 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. (50,000 billion billion).

Kansas rightly sings...'All we are is dust in the wind'......but isn't our pride beyond imagination?

So the questions are........

Where do we stand? What is our importance, if any, keeping in mind the frightening scales of distance and time, in the cosmos?

Kansas sings:

"Just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do
Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind,
Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky..."

(Sarah Brightman singing 'Dust in the Wind' and 'Who Wants to live Forever'.)

The Illusion Of Suffering Part 3 (Thich Quang Duc)

On June 11, 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk from Vietnam, burned himself to death at a busy intersection in Saigon as a protest against repressive policies of the Catholic Diem regime. Buddhist monks asked the regime to lift its ban on flying the traditional Buddhist flag, to grant Buddhism the same rights as Catholicism, to stop detaining Buddhists and to give Buddhist monks and nuns the right to practice and spread their religion.

While burning, the monk Thich Quang Duc showed no signs of discomfort, pain or fear. He was at peace. It is said he was not under the influence of any drug at the time.

Assuming that this incident happened exactly as is reported...it points to something.

It points to the illusion of suffering. In my view.

So the question arises...HOW he could self immolate without feeling pain and discomfort and fear.

The answer could be that he had seen through the illusion of pain, fear, suffering and all such emotions. He had realised that such emotions cannot be real.

So what is the evidence that this HYPOTHESIS (that pain and suffering are an illusion) has some substance to it?

There can be no undebatable evidence really. Only pointers.

Many spiritual teachers say we humans are going through the 'dream of suffering'. Plenty of them say it. Not just one or two.

Our experience with sleep proves that only when the dream is over does one realise that it was all a dream, and never happened. We were just THINKING that it was happening. (If we think something is happening, it does not mean it is happening, of course.)

This...to me...is a very strong pointer.

But the strongest pointer is that mystics have been talking about the 'dream of suffering' for thousands of years.
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The fleeting nature of this life is self evident. The audio-visual quality of memories of what happened just 10 minutes back are no different from the audio-visual quality of memories of what happened 10 years back.

CONCLUSION:

The audio visual quality of memories of what happened 10 minutes back, logically speaking, should be stronger than the audio-visual quality of memories of what happened 10 years back....but is it?

This question opens one's mind to a huge number of questions. One answer forms, then another one forms, the mind dances.....but this question is worth remembering, from time to time.

Just the mere consideration of this question, and WATCHING mental-emotional reactions as this question is considered is a good way of seeing how one's perspective towards this question evolves.

As one's perspective towards this question evolves, a certain amount of detachment from life occurs. Which is always a good thing.

The Face Of Sanity

Sanity exists, in this world...!!