If the universe is an electronic virtual computer game - then where does that leave YOU? For that matter, who are YOU? And who am I.
Never mind the non-dual realization. It IS all maya - "real" maya - and when the sun goes nova - it'll all be gone for this planet....Game over - and everything "IN GAME" will be gone too....forever.
What if it is true that not all humans are inhabited by a soul? And even less so animals.
This means there is no "awakening" for them ever - all higher states are merely programmed options in their developmental potential - ..... and there is no afterlife for them....they revert back into the big nothingness, or the void, or the essential undifferentiated beingness.
Have you ever had the experience of revisiting the very same questions you asked yourself a long time ago - and then somewhere in between - and then again - even though there was, at the time, no further explanation needed? This is more unsettling.
If you are on a PATH - a spiritual path, you probably have encountered the facet of - owning your stuff, revisiting the same issues on yet another layer and you probably went ahead on the spiral of human development.
On that journey, there are times of turbulences and difficulties - when you move from one level to the next, from one stage to the next one up. There is a period of relaxation, orientation, maybe ease, you have a different view of things and people. ...and then it is as if the journey pick up again. The monsters aka demons aka trials may be larger, or, as someone said in a class I attended along time ago: you become visible to stronger "demons".
This is more like an approaching paradigm shift - and my human mind is trying to hold onto something that makes sense.
And so there is the quantum physics science and so maybe the universe is electronic - and coded, and follows basic laws....and it is possible to decode it???? - and humans, along with everything else "alive" on this planet are also virtual electronic programmed entities - all in the spiral of development.
I recall one such passage to a different level was triggered by taking care of a dog.
Now, after almost a year of exploring organic chicken keeping and gardening - discovering that it is a WAYYY beyond organic - Delving deeply into the plight of animals on this planet - i found myself increasingly wonder: do all humans actually have a soul? Too often I hear: that's what humans do .... and looking around ...they do.
Animal abuse is simply SOOOO pervasive - and there are plenty of humans who think nothing wrong with it ....Indeed, the rape and pillage of the planet by humans is beyond real comprehension. Seeing how they act towards animals and indeed, some organization going for total food control on the planet ...i wonder if those folks really have a soul. But it seems that is what humans do.
I read about the AQAL system of the Integral Community and at this point conclude: it is all just mapping the human potential - and has nothing to say about life after death - or - the non phenomenal self that supposedly reincarnates.
All paths and realizations and possibilities are already contained in the programming code of the DNA - all it needs is being given the chance to awaken - ie, get activated.
Does everyone really have an individuated soul/being? Even if all is part and expression of the great ISNESS or nothingness. ...I am talking about: is there really individuated non-phenomenal beingness in everyone....or anyone?
So then recently I encountered the concept of "flatties" and roundies, where roundies are humans occupied by a being, flatties are not. Flatties and roundies - for the most part - are indistinguishable based on observed behavior that would fall into the caring, kind - or "good" behavior. There are however some activities that a roundy would not engage in - at least a roundy with any degree of awareness ...so actually, you can't tell from the outside. But the feelings and sensations in either are human. ...with 1 difference.
So then, not all humans are occupied?
For a roundy, they are just like flatties, only occupied but a soul.
True freedom of the being: not to be controlled by the machine/human and not controlling it.
Stillness, silence, not-knowing - a sense of suspension.
The other day I saw a youtube clip of a workshop - and I recognized the space, the look the words - even though the people and locale was different - still, the same.
There is a sameness to all kinds of spaces and things - there is the stadium type space with the look and cheers and hot dogs and the new age workshop type space with the look and incense smells and their ways to talk. There are farm spaces and school spaces and gang spaces and cultural spaces ....
There are ways to be skillful and healthy in each of those - and then are are ways to be ill and dysfunctional - but no matter where you are, location and developmental stage - still it IS just another stage in human development....mappable - inherently programmed into the potential and development.
And it is true: the movement code says: towards pleasure, away from pain, and we do share that with animals, and in fact, more fundamentally, withplants. And it really is true: everyone wants to be happy.
And truly, we can't think out of the human range - not truly outside this box, this basic meta programming, even as we discover more and more of the DNA code and it's possibilities.
All the mapping and coding and what not: None of it speaks to the existence of a non-phenomenal self that does persist outside that code.
So in the end - standing so still and perplexed and knowing that I do not know, I recognize that I understand in a different way things that sages and wise men have said a lot time ago - only they are not mere words to guide me, but I understand their truth - the only way for this entity is:
First: DO NO HARM
There is suffering going on in millions of these sentient entities here.
I want to relieve suffering.
How do I best relieve suffering?
I understand what someone says about his religion: Kindness is my religion.
It stems from a sense of compassion for these beings. Then there is the recognition, once again, at the overwhelming task, non-ending, futile. It does bring it back to: Now, here & longing for simplicity.
Maybe compassion really is not a human/mammalian/life on earth trait, like caring or empathy are, which are encoded in the DNA. Or maybe this human here, me, just got "lucky" to get the code bits that call up compassion and when others "get to" live life without that. In other words, maybe the compassion gene is not in everyone - and hence we'd all be flatties.
I don't know, but there really is only this question that matter to me right now: how can I at least not be the cause of more suffering - even if it does not seem to matter much beyond the moment.
Later I will wonder about chickens again ....
And then there is this advice for humans - from Blacky, a rooster looking for a home:
I know Schopenhauer uses the word soul here - let us not hang up on that, use living creature if you will - but when anyone or anything dies, it is indeed gone. It existed like that, even within a pattern and code, in that uniqueness only once, no matter how may offspring. Even identical twins, for all their uncanny likeness, are not completely the same. And then the game is over, at the latest when the sun goes nova - nothing remains. I wonder if it is possible to have an essential memory of the living creatures here on this planet that we loved - that stays with the part of souls that come to visit and learn here?
As I said, I know less today that ever - and my sincere wish is to not cause anyone or anything harm or unnecessary suffering - myself included. For some the disposition: "I just want to be happy" and "I can have it all, giving my greatest gifts" - when there is so much suffering going on - I just can't go there as my motivation. On the other hand - this human biological machine came with some severe limitations in the skilful means department...... But the question of: where is your passion - is still worthwhile to answer as that is where you will find the energy to do what you came here to do.
Don't forget - I am writing this not knowing anything anymore - just not wanting to cause harm.
And maybe I need to revisit the post - What I believe - because it may not be true - or rather - only what you truly loved as a being stays alive because it lives in you - it becomes part of your being - and that is the way it lives - and maybe what we believe is what becomes true ..... choose your beliefs wisely then. Blessings to you.
c.
