I very much like Kahneman’s phrase, “Theory of Induced Blindness”. Identity with a paradigm, simultaneously valid yet contradictory realities, transgradient flexibility, conditioning, preconceived notions… How many ways have we said it?
Really, with just a little thought, it is self-evident… isn’t it? Education at some point is more about indoctrination than true education. Right? I think everyone actually knows it. However, it is like gravity. Everyone knew about gravity before Newton named it. Yet there is power in the naming of it. Once named, it is more easily focused upon, worked with, and more fully understood.
It is the same with spirituality. Every person, every religion, understands it, feels it, with some degree of clarity… or vagueness, depending on how you look at it… the glass half full or half empty. A belief system is identified with, thereby limiting people from seeing the bigger picture.
True learning is about expanding awareness, so all paradigms, all perspectives, all belief systems are understood… used or abandoned based upon the need of the moment…. i.e. transgradient flexibility. It is important to understand this, yet ultimately living it is a state of physiology, a level of consciousness, as opposed to just another belief system.
How did Emanuel Lasker, the ‘grandfather of chess’, put it? “I spent the last half of my life trying to forget what I learning in the first half.” Of course, you do not really try to forget. You just evolve your relationship with it. You become less identified with it. You see beyond it. You understand it on a deeper level.
Yesterday Barbara, Marcia, and I had a planning meeting at Barbara’s house for the Enlightened City design. After a telephone conversation with the Sthapatis in India, we decided to walk down to the temple to report the latest developments to Panditji. Walking down the path by Hanuman Park, I mentioned that we all felt light-hearted as children going for an adventurous walk on a summer day. We were not embarked upon a task, we were enjoying a pure hearted adventure… light as feathers. They both agreed. They could feel it. One of us commented that this is how life should always be.
Later that day, my daughter mentioned a book title to me, “The Blinding Absence of Light”. Though I still have little idea of what the book is about, the title inspired me with a flood of thoughts. As adults, the lightness of heart, the innocence of childhood, is all too often absent. It seems that has almost become a requirement for adulthood. In moments of retaliation, adults may attempt to reclaim that lightness in unnatural ways. The truth is, lightness is more an inner state than an outer behavior. Too many are blinded by the absence of such light-hearted simplicity in their daily life. The company you keep, where you put your attention, and your attitude in general, all have profound effects on your psyche, your health, and your happiness.
Do we even have a word for mature, adult, inner light-heartedness? It is simple but not simplistic. It is playful, yet more about an inner state than an outer behavior. It is not blinding, but eye-opening to the blessings of life. The absence of such lightness is blinding, but has overtaken the belief systems of many. The solution is simple, not complex. Favor simplicity but do not be simplistic. Favor innocence but do not be naive. Remove the blinders of a burdened worldview. Your boat can be in the choppy waters of life, but no need for those waters to be in the boat of your Being. Favor a light relationship with life over a heavy, burdensome worldview. This need not be an overt act. It is just a matter of not getting in your own way and allowing yourself to enjoy life in a simple, innocent, and feather-light manner.
Of course, ‘light’ has another meaning as well. From deep within you, unencumbered by conventional views, indoctrinations, or self-imposed manipulations of your inner wisdom… there lies what may be called your inner light, your inner knowing, your inner sight. To deny it, even in the name of what you have learned to be a better way, is to impose upon yourself the blinding absence of light. Truth lies within you. Yet truth is easily obscured when you allow life’s complexities to blind you to your own inner truth. To be free is to live in harmony with that inner knowing, that inner wisdom, those inner instincts.
Now combine these two meanings of ‘light’ and simply live your life. Remember, Truth is light. All the tools I have given you facilitate the culturing of that. It is a process. Enjoy the light!
One need look no further than to a mother holding her child to know that this is not a man’s world at all. This world is held by the Mother. It is Mother Divine that holds our world together, holds our universe, holds our hearts.
Sri Vidya, Knowledge of the Mother, is known to be the highest knowledge. The Mother is the upholder of dharma. She holds us all in her heart. She understands us all. She stands-under, upholds, all of life and the entire family dynamic of humanity. It is her love and understanding that holds us all with tenderness.
On this day, we celebrate in gratitude to our mothers.
There is a very common practice that creates a lot of senseless problems for good people everywhere. It involves two E’s… Emotions and Extrapolation. Extrapolation is the continuation on a trajectory. For example, if the temperature drops 5 degrees in one hour, by extrapolation you would think that in 24 hours we would all be freezing.
Combine an emotional response with extrapolation and you build things up in your mind and emotions, creating terrible fantasy worlds for yourself that have essentially nothing to do with reality. You get terribly troubled over small insignificant things that through extrapolation inflate to become the source of huge upsetting conflicts, traumas, hurts, angers, etc. etc.
A word to the wise, you take a HUGE step forward in your relationship with yourself, with people and with all of life when you can catch yourself before you get hooked by the Double E. Watch for the Double E and you will be amazed to see how often it overtakes good people everywhere.
A beloved member of the Mount Soma community recently passed away. At such emotional, delicate and tender times, one naturally wonders why. How could such a thing have happened? What are we to do with our grief? Why would a person with so much to live for be taken away? What is the nature of life and death?
To honestly speak of such a thing, I can only come from a place deep within myself. To do so is not so simple in such a sensitive time. I hope my words are understood and well received.
To ask why someone passes when they do, it is best to remember Lord Krishna’s words from the Bhagavad Gita, “The course of action is unfathomable”. It is not even so simple as to claim it is karmic. The are times when one can be ‘called’ upon to do some work on some other level that gives them the opportunity to move more rapidly forward with their evolution. We are not to second-guess such things or even pretend to know the answer. We can only remain humble with respect to the possibilities. From our side, of course, life is always precious. It is natural and appropriate to protect all life. We do our best to support the lives of one and other always. However, to understand the mechanics of incarnations, I feel offers great comfort in such times. To view the matter from a worldly perspective is natural and appropriate, but humility regarding the cosmic scheme of such things is wise and does, I believe, also offer comfort to the grieving who are willing to be with that understanding.
For myself, the loss of a dear friend or loved one is an inward time. It is a time when I feel their soul deeply. It is a time when I desire to be with them in my silence. It is a time when I feel I have some sense of how they are doing and can offer my love and assistance during their time of transition.
Traditionally, it is a time when the grieving come together to mourn. I do understand that, but it is not my way. For me, it is a time properly spent in relative silence with the deceased, not with the living. I understand this may even offend some, but for me it is not proper to attend a funeral. Or perhaps better said, a funeral is a quiet inward and alone time. That is just how I am, and I feel it is important for the deceased that I do so.
It is important to understand also that only the physical body dies. The soul lives on. There is much anecdotal evidence of this, but for me that understanding came another way. As I child, I remembered. But I did not understand how I could remember. But it was a memory. Only in later life when I first heard of reincarnation did I then understand how I could be remembering. So for me, the notion of reincarnation is self evident and unquestionable.
Many wonder what happens after death. I can best say that the possibilities are endless and depend largely upon the ‘angle of entry’. It is said that when one is meditating regularly, they naturally go to the transcendental level, to the highest heaven. I have no doubt that is true. Of course, there can certainly be a brief time of confusion. However, that would be sorted out rather quickly and quite naturally.
I know there are many questions about reincarnation, life after death, and so on. However, I feel now is the time for me to be with our beloved friend. So if you have questions, please feel free to post them, but also please understand if I, for now, choose not to respond to some or all. This is a delicate and heartfelt time. Please forgive anything that may seem improper or unclear. At this time, I can only speak of such things from deep within myself, from a level that is difficult to express in writing. I trust these words will offer some comfort and understanding.
Why are some people lucky and some not? What is luck? As I contemplate my life, both past and present, I realize I’m a very “lucky” person. I have been so fortunate. Good fortune just seems to drop in my lap. Some people I know haven’t been so fortunate. Why am I so lucky?
To which I respond:
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as luck. Life has two components: Karma and Dharma.
Karma is quite simply action. The laws of karma (action) are simply the laws of cause and effect. The effect is not always immediate. It can take even more than one lifetime for the fruits of your action to affect you. The effect can be there for an entire lifetime or a period of time or in a moment. What we think of as good luck is more accurately viewed as the result of some action in the past for which the effect is happening.
Dharma means life in harmony with nature. As you evolve, you live more and more in harmony with nature and thereby receive the support of nature. As with karma, that is often called luck.
It is not so easy to know what is karma and what is dharma or lack of dharma in your life. This is particularly true because of the time lag between cause and effect. You can be a very dharmic person but experiencing the unpleasant effect of a much earlier karma. Or you may be a person living a non-dharmic life but being carried by a wave of fruitful karma from long ago. This is one reason why the puzzle of life is not so easy to unravel.
So if you are lucky this lifetime, do not squander it. As the saying goes, make hay while the sun shines. Meditate, look deeper, live a good life, and evolve.
Everything maps onto everything else. This is a fundamental principle of nature. You are the unified field. The shoes you wear are also the unified field. That is just physics. If you are the unified field and your shoes are the unified field, it follows you are your shoes. Anything and everything you can think of is the unified field. So, it follows that a pencil is a bottle of water, is a shoe, is a grain of sand, is a galaxy, is a nation. This is just physics. It is called mapping.
The principle of mapping permeates everything. In reflexology, the foot maps onto the rest of the body: the big toe is the head, the heel is the pelvis, etc. Some say the cleanliness and neatness of your home maps onto the state of your mind. In a graph, a value of x maps onto a value of y. Mappings are everywhere and become profoundly complex.
The human psyche innately knows such principles exist, even though modern scientific thought has only comprehended the most superficial and simplistic mappings. Superstitions emerge when people reach for such mappings but do not have the clarity of mind and soul necessary to fathom such mappings. Imagine a life when these mappings are spontaneously understood and honored.
It is widely accepted, even among scientists, that there is a unified field underlying all of nature. This unified field births the quantum mechanical realm, referred to in ancient India as “the Veda.” It provides a structure that bubbles up through all levels of existence, permeating, upholding and ruling even the most superficial – the physical level of existence. Likewise, principles contained within the structure of the Veda emerge on the surface of life. Incredibly, even the structure of fundamental operators (gods) within the Veda, emerge on the surface of life. In other words, their forms are not arbitrary. They are woven into the very fabric underlying all of existence and show themselves on all levels of existence, even on the very surface.
Utilizing the principle of mapping and reflexology, any part of the body can be healed by treating its corresponding location on the foot. Relating this to the topic of Vedic ceremony, the physical murthis (images of the gods) correlate with, map onto, the operators (gods) contained within the unified field. The materials (flowers, camphor, etc.) used in the ceremonies map onto different principles or values contained within the Veda. Nothing is arbitrary. It is all quite scientific. It is a technology based upon mapping, every bit as precise and well-defined as the technologies of modern science.
I invite you to take the time to apply your powers of discernment to the subtle matter of mapping and Vedic ceremony, with at least the same level of humility with which you would study math or science. When fully understood with all superstition cast aside, spirituality and science seamlessly merge.
“Gravitas was one of the Roman virtues, along with pietas, dignitas, and virtus. It may be translated variously as weight, seriousness and dignity, also importance, and connotes a certain substance or depth of personality.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitas
The demise of ancient Rome came with, and many would argue, resulted from, the decay of these virtues… the decay of the earlier meaning/understanding of these virtues. Some say modern society is following in the footsteps of that demise.
We are social creatures. Just as the vegetation and animals of a land were born of, and evolved in, harmony with that land, the virtues of a society are born of nature… born of the laws of nature inherent to the very soil upon which that society emerged. The health of a culture is in direct proportion with the degree to which the people live in harmony with nature, with natural law, with our own true nature. Every bit as much as food, water, and air, harmony with nature is our life’s blood.
Cultural values may appear to be arbitrary, but they are not. As people lose connection with the depth of their soul… the fiber of their being… their inner wisdom, cultural values appear more and more to be arbitrary. Instead of inner wisdom, the way the wind blows determines the culture’s worldview. Values then gradually become more arbitrary… without substance, without valid basis. Most anything can be, and is, justified by the intellect… rational-ized. The winds of karma are then free to determine the mindset of the people. Law-makers and spiritual leaders are then selected based upon, not substance, but gusts of delusion. Society decays.
As the drug culture of the 1960’s swept the Western world, the integration of humanity with natural law (inner wisdom… the deeper meaning of Gravitas, Pietas, Dignitas, and Virtus) broke down. It set society’s sail in the direction of that wave of karma that has carried Western mentally off course.
It appears we are witnessing a global reaction. When the pendulum swings too far in one direction, it naturally, in time, will swing too far in the other. It birthed radical extremism. The values, twisted as they are, offer a social code. Remarkably, in a society of degraded social code, even that extremism becomes appealing to some. People turn their back on what a great society was, because of what it was becoming. They then set out to find a society they can identify with… one that at least has a solid direction.
We are cultural/social creatures. Values are not found through intellectual fantasies, ivory towers, or crystalline castles. They are found in the depth of your being… in a place that lies far deeper than the social pressures of a culture that has lost its way.
It is not my place to tell you what to think, what laws to obey. But I will do my very best to assist you in finding that place inside that is one with nature, one with natural law… one with your true nature, one with the source of individual and cultural integrity… one with the true meaning of Veda.
Veda is not just a set of books. Veda means nature. In a healthy society, our true nature permeates all aspects of life.
Thoughts matter little. How you feel about those thoughts makes all the difference.
Knowledge is accessed through feeling, not thought.
Wise thoughts are the product of refined feelings… i.e. the process of reasoning.
Reasoning is the link between thoughts and feelings that lie deeper within than thought.
The process is called discernment. Distortions from past impressions (samskaras) can interfere with the process of discernment on any level: for example, emotional bias, intellectual indoctrination, etc.
Common sense means sensing the level that is common to all that is… sensing the transcendental level and forming your thoughts based upon that sensing… that feeling.
As that sensing becomes even more refined, it transcends common sense and becomes wisdom.
Wisdom is further refined through the very finest level of feeling to find its basis in the transcendent…
the one thing that is the basis of all things…
Pure Knowledge…
the source of all knowledge…
the source of all that is.
The sequence goes from the Transcendent
to the finest feeling level
to the wisdom level
to the common sense level
to the reasoning level
to the level of concrete thoughts.
Enlightenment means integration (harmonization) of all levels of your being. The winds of life (karma) may blow the branches in all directions, yet they remain in harmony with the trunk and root of life… firmly established in the Transcendent.
"Take the time to reflect on what is said here. If you find yourself associating this material with things you have heard elsewhere, please take the time to diligently explore how they are different. This knowledge is elusive. I share it here because I have seen how much this knowledge helps people – the potential is enormous." – Michael Mamas
"True knowledge slips through the fingers of those not willing to ponder…" – Michael Mamas
"Take what I say and work with it to develop a deeper understanding of life, rather than taking what I say and forcing it into the mold of your current relationship with life." – Michael Mamas
"Evolution means change." – Michael Mamas
"Your disposition is the tone with which you hold yourself, your cells, your psyche, your beliefs. More than anything else, it determines your life." – Michael Mamas
I very much like Kahneman’s phrase, “Theory of Induced Blindness”. Identity with a paradigm, simultaneously valid yet contradictory realities, transgradient flexibility, conditioning, preconceived notions… How many ways have we said it?
One need look no further than to a mother holding her child to know that this is not a man’s world at all. This world is held by the Mother. It is Mother Divine that holds our world together, holds our universe, holds our hearts.
There is a very common practice that creates a lot of senseless problems for good people everywhere. It involves two E’s… Emotions and Extrapolation. Extrapolation is the continuation on a trajectory. For example, if the temperature drops 5 degrees in one hour, by extrapolation you would think that in 24 hours we would all be freezing.
I was asked the following question:
“Gravitas was one of the Roman virtues, along with pietas, dignitas, and virtus. It may be translated variously as weight, seriousness and dignity, also importance, and connotes a certain substance or depth of personality.” 
Thoughts matter little. How you feel about those thoughts makes all the difference.
Reflect.
