The STORY

      There were once two men, both seriously ill, in the same small room of a great hospital. The room was small, just large enough for the pair of them: two beds, two bedside lockers, a door opening into the hall, and one window looking out on the world.

      One of the men, Bud, as part of his treatment, was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon, (something to do with draining the fluid from his lungs) and his bed was positioned next to a window.

      But the other man, Walter, had to spend all his time flat on his back; both of them had to be kept quiet and still, which was the reason they were in this small room by themselves. But they were grateful for peace and privacy. There was none of the bustle and clatter and the prying eyes of the general ward for them. However, one of the disadvantages of their condition was that they weren't allowed much to do: no reading, no radio, certainly no television; they just had to keep quiet and still, just the two of them.

      The result was that they got to talk for hours and hours - about their lives, their homes, their former jobs, their hobbies, their childhood, what they did during the war, where they had been on vacations - all sorts of things. Also, every afternoon, when Bud was propped up for his hour, he would pass the time by describing what he could see through the window, outside. And, over time, as Bud talked Walter began to come more alive.

      The window apparently overlooked a park with a lake. There were ducks and swans, children throwing them bread, sailing model boats, and young lovers walking hand in hand beneath a canopy of green trees. And there were plethora of flowers and stretches of grass. There were also games of softball, people relaxing in the sunshine, and in the distance behind the fringe of trees, there was a fine view of a city skyline.

      Walter, on his back, would listen to all of this, enjoying every minute…how a child nearly fell into the lake, how beautiful the girls were in their summer dresses, and then an exciting ball game, or a boy playing with his puppy. It got to the place that he could clearly see in his mind’s eye all that was happening outside.

      Then one sunny afternoon, when there was a parade, a thought struck Walter: why should Bud have all the pleasure of seeing what was going on? Why shouldn't he, too, get the chance? But Walter felt ashamed and tried not to think like that, but the more he tried, the worse he wanted things to change; finally it got to the point that he'd do anything!

      In a few days Walter’s disposition turned sour. He should be by the window; Suffering, he brooded and couldn't sleep. Then in his anguish he grew even more seriously ill - which none of his doctors understood.

      One night, as Walter lay staring at the ceiling, Bud suddenly woke up coughing and choking, more fluid was congesting in his lungs; his were hands groping for the button that would bring the night nurse running. But Walter did nothing and continued to stare at the ceiling.

      In the morning the day nurse came in with their morning breakfasts and found Bud had passed away. They took away his body, quietly, no fuss. Walter didn’t want to talk about it.

      As soon as it seemed decent, Walter asked if he could be moved to the bed next to the window. So, they moved him, tucked him in, and made him quite comfortable, and then left him alone to be quiet and still.

      The minute he was alone, Walter propped himself up on one elbow, painfully and laboriously; then he looked out the window. It faced a blank wall…

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 Commentary:

All experience is subjective because it is parsed by the functionalism of the physical brain and then filtered through the subjective “Story” we have developed since conception, inherited from ancestors and the world around us. Once filtered, all experience reduces to only a shadow of any real event. And, while these shadows become our personal and collective realities in memory, they are at best, special cases of reality(2) since they can never represent any form of universality. However, we are forced to believe our experiences real in order to survive the onslaughts of a hostile, even predatory, world; thus we create our individual and collective “Stories” and become egoistically attached to them. Unfortunately, because of our egoism, what we never want to admit is that the “Story” is a fiction created by our longing to both function and comprehend the world around us. In this denial we become imprisoned by our own hopes, desires and expectations. As Henry Thoreau stated, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation(3).”   However, I submit, this is only true to the extent of one’s personal “Story.”

 Letting go of the “Story” is transcendence and the beginning of self-actualization(4) and subsequent awakening. It begins with honest self-reflection, a recapitulation of life, honestly looking for the flaws in our personal “Story.” If we cannot transcend the “Story,” then the self-protective ego-shadow(5) duality appears as objective as a brick wall and our destiny is bound to it, resulting in our lives being deterministic based upon a fiction, the fiction of the “Story” (whatever that “Story” might be).

 And yet, it is within the context of freedom (from the “Story”) that the true essence of being is known.  When the “Story” no longer captures and holds our attention, we are, indeed, free.

 Something to consider is “Chaos Theory(6).” “Chaos Theory” is the science of movement of energy that is biased by what’s called a “Strange Attractor(7).” Like a drop of water falling from a spigot and into a pool, the “Strange Attractor” is an undetectable force governing how the drop of water leaves the spigot and falls through space. One could say that the “Strange Attractor” collapses energy into a recognizable outcome, even when the “Strange Attractor” itself is not recognizable. For the purposes of this essay, the “Strange Attractor” is the “Story” that directs our awareness and produces behavioral outcomes. However, what is generally unknown, this “Strange Attractor” is modifiable though conscious intent(8) and is the path toward awakening.

 Transcendence:

All experience contains a paradox of doubt. This paradox of doubt is a double-bind created by two or more competing situations, i.e., what we witness, what we think we witness, or what we think we are supposed to witness. Our reaction to this double-bind egoistically causes us to infocus(9) into the “Story” we carry with us, moment-to-moment. The outcome, thus, is a deterministic way of being and living. The “Story” establishes a-priori condition that defines who we are, our beliefs, and our path through life. In essence, our life and who we are as individuals exists before the effect of behavior.

 However, there are “Strange Attractors” that guide the creation of our personal and collective “Stories;” these are the archetypes(10) residing in our unconscious psyche. These archetypes establish predefined potentials for human behavior; however, it is the “Story” that delineates behavior within the confines of any one archetype. As an analogy, one could say that archetypes represent the theatrical stage upon which the “Story” is acted out. They are energetic in that they force consciousness to interpret experience by in predefined ways. If experience does not resonate with an archetype then it is dismissed as nonessential and forgotten. This a-priori condition has been handed to us by millions of years of evolution where the prime directive is survival. Thus, we create a self-protective ego-shadow duality based upon how our personal “Story” fits into the archetype, like a lock and key(11).

 The result is we live our lives with the quiet desperation that these “Stories” represent truth; this quiet desperation is called “Suffering.” It’s suffering because deep within every being is the gut feeling that the “Story” is unreal; because, unless we are in total denial, at some intrinsic level we all know our part in the “Story’s” creation; it is us. It is only when we are not gut honest with ourselves that we believe we understand; not being gut honest results in  parameterizing(12), we make stuff up…we create a “Story” to explain what we don’t understand, and perhaps can never understand.

 It is the “Story” supported by the stage of our archetypes that creates our egos of strong objectivity. The reason is because it is a survival mechanism that began in some ancestral past. Like us, they, too, looked out their personal/collective windows and created their fantastic “Stories” in whatever language and metaphors they used in their time; and, today, not understanding the how’s, why’s, or the metaphors throughout history, we buy into it in our own lives; too often we are hoodwinked into believing that the ancients knew better than modernity. So that, effectively, like building a pyramid, our personal “Story” becomes a capstone to the collective “Stories” of the past, thus creating an apparent consensus and resulting cultural experience. “If everyone believes it, it must be true…?” Consider: just like Bud telling Walter about the dramas he said he witnessed out that hospital window, religion is simply a “Storytellers” attempt to give us life’s-meaning and to end suffering. The tragedy across time is that one culture’s way of trying find meaning and ending suffering is not equally shared by other cultures and results in conflict or war, thus, creating more suffering. To quote another “Storyteller”: “I have met the enemy and they are us(13).”

 The human brain is a funny thing. It cannot experience reality directly. Through the windows of our senses, our brains can only experience reality as abstract reflections and then store them as dislocated memory fragments. Simply put, what we see, hear, touch, etc., is fragmented and modulated buy our brain stuff and then interpreted by both experience and environment prior to any conscious awareness. We would like to believe that there is a single point of focus in our brains where everything comes together creating a whole. However, modern neuroscience shows us that there is no such single point as reasoned by our ancestral philosophers. Rather, our brain is constructed in functional blocks that work both independent and cooperatively specifically to enhance survival. This means, there is no homunculus(14) inside us viewing a movie screen and then operating the controls.

 But the situation worsens as one considers the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. For example: we can evaluate position in time and space with our senses, but we cannot evaluate the continuum of time and space in totality since this is outside our sensory domain. Therefore, at best, whatever it is we witness is simply a special case of a more universal principle, that principle being completely unknowable to human physical-brain and its resulting consciousness. By the very nature of our consciousness we are constrained by limits demonstrated by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle; an observation is totally dependent upon the observer and, while we attempt to observe one facet of reality, we automatically lose information regarding other facets. Consider: the closest we get to a homunculus is like having a metaphorical Isaac Newton(15) sitting inside our brains telling us how to define reality; we tend to see reality in the form of derivatives. We take a point along a continuum and believe that single point to be an all-encompassing fact. Then from this single point we parameterize our data and believe it represents universal truth.

 It would be easy at this point to claim that all is null and be nihilistic, that whatever it is we are finally reduces to nothing. But this would be an even greater fiction. Because, like a stone thrown into clear pool of water, we witness that our individual and collective consciousness’s modulate everything we come into contact with, both locally and globally. These modulations, in turn, reflect back to us as standing waves that, in turn, affect our experiences. Anyone who can see the energetic flow between that which we call “self” and the universe knows firsthand that something exists, and we all share in this existence; as one moves all move, reciprocity.

 The way out of the dilemma and the resulting double-bind begins with putting one’s self in the place of the “Storyteller.” When we do this we soon realize that the “Storyteller” created a fiction, nothing more, nothing less. In this, we are all equal, and like a Zen “slap-on-the-side-of-the-head,” thus begins our great awakening.

 Awakening:

Awakening from the “Story” includes a third alternative to the double-bind created by the paradox of doubt; this alternative is non-action. It begins with turning off the internal dialog that one maintains within one’s self, moment-to-moment. When one does not act or react with the ego of strong objectivity, that person enters into the realm of non-action and non-attachment, or, in other words, the uncreated (ego is no longer in action and therefore no longer created). Awareness(16) is no longer infocused, rather, it can now outfocus . Outfocused(17), awareness experiences a world much larger than an isolated ego-self. And when one moves in that new direction, one is quintessentially creative, simply because he/she is not bound by the constraints of the “Story.” Herein lays ultimate freedom, the freedom of choice.

 But at this point one’s awareness is most vulnerable. Because the new “Story” that one might create can be experienced as more real than the original “Story” they gave up at the point of awakening, exemplified when Buddha discovered the “Daughters of Mara(18),” or Christ’s “Temptations of Satan(19).” The seduction of the new “Story” is very real and once again it can become egocentric because it automatically aligns with our inherent archetypical unconscious; it must, otherwise we could not grasp it with our conscious minds. Like Buddha said, we can call the archetypical unconscious within us the “Architect,” for it is this “Architect” modulating experience that gives rise to the “Story” as a defense against the onslaughts of the world at large, either imagined or real, in either the physical or the spiritual realms of existence.

 So, where do the “Stories” start and stop? For most humans they start and stop with birth and death (of the “Architect”). But awareness survives and exists independent of the “Architect.” What most of us never realize it that awareness is bound to a fixed reference point (the “Story”) only to the extent that we as individual beings let it, either by conscious or unconscious choices…which means, for most, cultural conditioning, resulting in egoism as a survival mechanism.

 The key, therefore, is simply the movement of awareness and the realization that awareness is never in an absolute fixed position, as the “Architect” and the resulting “Stories” would have us believe. We are energy beings and we live in a relativistic universe. Once realized, all is forgiven!

 The “Awakening” of the Buddha, Christ and others began with their personal individuation from their families of origin and ultimately their culture. Once they realized their awareness was free they began to experience other realms of existence that, prior to “Awakening,” they were unaware of. For Buddha this was metaphorically called the “Seduction by the Daughters of Mara;” he could see the “Spirit World(20),” in addition to what we normally call “Reality.” For Christ this was the “Temptations of Satan.” And, while each realm of existence has an energy and “Story” of its own, they saw that each realm is a fiction and to be trapped in any dimensional realm is fall into the abyss of that fiction. Thus, Buddha declared, all is void (as fiction is void of reality). Further, to be trapped in any fiction (in any “Story”) is to “Suffer;” we “Suffer” because we are caught in the fictions of a deterministic universe of our own creation. Once we can put away the fictions we are spiritually free. Compassion and the altruistic modes of existence are by-products of spiritual freedom.

 While the “Story” gives us knowledge and security within its domain, the “Story” is our supreme jailor.  The Sangha is our great benefactor; the Sangha is our greatest prison.

 And, after all is said and done, we must still wash and put away the dishes!

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Things to consider:

Theorem 1. Human consciousness is created as a reaction to the world at large, a survival strategy. Consciousness is an abstraction and a subjective map of reality. Therefore, anyone’s “Story” is a subjective experience and originates from perception that is not entirely real. At a core level we are all cartographers…mapmakers. Our biggest error is to believe this map is absolute truth and, thus, defend it with ego.

 Theorem 2. Reality as seen by individual consciousness is a superposition of an individual’s “Story” graphed onto the energy of the world at large. In other words, while we (as individuals) are part of the world, we participate in the energy of the world by adding our “Story” to it; the world in turn helps define our “Story”…reciprocity.

 Theorem 3. One of our brain’s specialties is pattern recognition; it allows us to quickly recognize and discriminate environmental objects. However, too often the data coming to our senses is incomplete. Therefore, our brains parameterize the missing pieces of data in order to perceive a coherent whole. This is why we misinterpret our sensory inputs and make mistakes.

 Theorem 4. Most people simply want to talk; they don’t want to understand; when they speak without understanding they create a fiction! Unfortunately, humans tend to take everything to exaggeration, especially their personal fictions.

 Theorem 5. If you speak profound truths, most people yawn, and if they dare, they leave you. But when you tell them absurd fables they’re all eyes and ears. We wish our doctrines, whether religious, philosophical or social to be agreeable and consistent with our preconceptions, to satisfy our inclinations; in fact we wish to find ourselves in these doctrines and approved by them(21).

 Theorem 6. To walk a path all one’s life without really knowing where it’s going, such is the way of the masses.

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(1)  Taken from "Growing Deep - Exploring the Roots of Our Faith", by Charles R. Swindoll.

(2)  Reality is synonymous with existence; that which is “real” produces effects. It follows, then, that which produces effects for one but not another has no universal reality, rather it is a special case. Each sphere, each world, each order of beings possesses a reality of its own because it produces effects in its special sphere and for its specific order of beings. Therefore, we must beware of ideas and judgements based upon our human mentality or our human senses; for these do not represent that which exists across the infinity of space.

(3) Thoreau, Henry David., Walden, or Life in the Woods, Shambhala Publications, Inc., ISBN 0-87773-685-5

(4) From Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs:  Self-actualization is the highest order of human need and is realized only after the lower order needs are fulfilled. The order of needs are, from bottom to top: the physiological needs, the need for safety,  the needs of love and belonging, the need for self-esteem, and finally the need for self-actualization. Self-actualization means experiencing fully, vividly, selflessly with full concentration and full absorption, without the self-consciousness of the adolescent; at this moment a person is fully human making growth choices rather than fear choices. Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, An Esalen Book, 1971, ISBN: 670-30853-6

(5) Ego-shadow duality refers to Jungian psychology. The term shadow refers to that part of personality which has been repressed for the sake of the ego idea. Unfortunately repression does not eliminate the qualities or drives that keep them from functioning; it merely removes them from ego awareness and, while we normally don’t see them in ourselves, they are readily observable in others. The shadow never lies; it is the ego that lies about its real motives. This is why successful psychotherapy, and any genuine religious conversion, requires absolute honesty about oneself with oneself. Conscious and unconscious do not make a whole when one of them is suppressed and injured by the other. C. G. Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness (within us) conscious.” Zweig and Abrams, Meeting the Shadow, The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature, Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1991, ISBN: 0-87477-618

(6) Up until the Quantum Mechanical Revolution people believed that things were directly caused by other things, that what went up had to come down, and that if only we could catch and tag every particle in the universe we could predict events from then on. Entire governments and systems of belief were (and, sadly, still are) founded on these beliefs. Chaos Theory however teaches us that nature most often works in patterns (often times unrecognizable without detailed and laborious study), which are caused by the sum of many tiny (seemingly unrelated) influences. 

(7)  When viewed in terms of “Chaos Theory,” the “Strange Attractor” biases a set of dynamical conditions such that order evolves from chaos. When viewed from this prospective, the human brain is the “Strange Attractor” that collapses chaos into our individual reality. In order to change the outcomes of Chaos, the “Strange Attractor” must somehow change.

(8) Intent herein is defined as a something that must be accomplished at all costs. Consider a mountain lion mother protecting its cub. The mother will do whatever it takes, even sacrifice her own life. It can be argued, therefore, that the purposeful life is lived with intent; intent is our personal power. Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan, The Lessons of Don Juan, A Touchstone Book, 1972, ISBN: 671-21399-7

(9) Infocus means: to look subjectively inside your own head for answers and/or solutions to problems. This usually results in egoistic ways of interacting with the world. Worman, The Frog King, iUniverse, Inc., 2008, ISBN: 978-0-595-50110-9

(10) In Jungian psychology, archetypes are highly developed elements of the collective unconscious. Being unconscious, the existence of archetypes can only be deduced indirectly by examining behavior, images, art, myths, religions, or dreams.

(11) It’s interesting to note that all biological life has specific lock and key mechanisms: antigen-antibody reactions, neurotransmitters and their specific receptors in the brain to name only a few.

(12) Parameterization is the act of filling in missing pieces of data with either logical argument, past experience or one’s best guess.

(13) “We have met the enemy and they are us” is a twist on Oliver Hazard Perry's words after a naval battle during the War of 1812.

(14) Homunculus is a little tiny person sitting inside one’s brain watching a viewing screen projecting a picture of reality, and in turn, controlling our actions and reactions. Some philosophers have equated the homunculus idea with a person’s soul. However, modern neuroscience demonstrates that there is no single point of consciousness like

(15) Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz independently invented calculus in the mid-17th century. This mathematical form is used to extract data such as rates of change from objects in motion, or areas of complex geometrical structures. Our current technology exists because of calculus and is ubiquitous in modern life.

(16) Awareness, for this essay, is not equated with consciousness, but transcendental to consciousness. Awareness is abstract and comes from inherent organizing functions of the mind, but not (physical) sense data. In this way one can be aware but not conscious. Further, by this definition consciousness is only a function of a living brain. Therefore, awareness is being-ness independent of a physical body.

(17) Outfocus means: to look objectively outside your own head for answers and/or solutions to problems, more like using the scientific method for problem solving. A great resource herein is to understand Euclidian Geometry where, If: A=B and B=C, then: A=C. However, if any of the elements are not equal, then A certainly does not equal C! Not understanding this basic concept is where human thought becomes a liability and results in “Suffering.” Worman, The Frog King, iUniverse, Inc., 2008, ISBN: 978-0-595-50110-9

(18) In Buddhist cosmology, Mara personifies unwholesome impulses, unskillfulness and the death of the spiritual life. Mara is a tempter, distracting humans by making mundane things alluring, or the negative seem positive.

(19) After being baptized by John the Baptist, Christ fasted for forty days and nights in the Judean Desert. During this time, Satan appeared to Christ and tried to tempt him. Christ refused each temptation, thereby retaining his own spirituality. As a side note, it must be realized that Christ was an ascetic and purposefully withdrew from ordinary/normal life. Throughout history, asceticism is the path for turning off the internal dialog and withdrawing from culture’s “Story” which hopefully leads to spiritual awakening.

(20) The spirit world is the realm inhabited by non-corporeal beings or spirits and appear independent from the natural world (material realism); both the spirit world and the natural world are in constant interaction. Human relation with the spirit-world is no more wonderful than the connection with the natural world. These seemingly different parts of nature respond to the same affinities because we are all connected to the same universe; therefore, truths and/or fictions exist in both worlds.

(12) David-Neel, Yongden, The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects, City of Light Books, 1967, ISBN: 0-87286-012-4

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