While reading Wei Wu Wei, this quote came up: "Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9% of everything you think, And everything you do, Is for your self, And there isn’t one." What is the nature of self, anyway? In what ways do we find ourselves answering, "Who am I?"http://www.weiwuwei.8k.com/
every time we let ourselves expect something, we beat ourselves over the head with it. i am the sum of my preferences, neither mind nor memory survive the transition from one life into another. (and certainly nothing having the appearance of physical form!) (although there may be some way in which something resembling memory survives, something analagous to off line storage perhapse, that can be, like restored from backups the next time we're born? i'm not claiming to know this, only trying to account for the appearent memories that i WAS born with. and they were of sentient adulthood, somewhere very much other then this earth, but just as physically tangable) i also think i've been able to reduce that 99.9 to something under 80. that doesn't make me a saint, but then that's not why i'm doing it. precisely because it means not robbing myself of as much happiness, my experiencing of my nonself as the case might be, is. (i'm pretty sure i'd be lying to myself if i tried to claim more then that, and have serious doubts about more then a handful of other people making the effort to do so, though of course we all, at least potentially could) =^^= .../\...
I am Everything learning how to be one thing. I like this quote from a book I am reading now: In the instant of our first breath, we are infused with the single greatest force in the universe-the power to translate the possibilities of our minds into the reality of our world. To fully awaken our power, however, requires a subtle change in the way7 we think of ourselves in life, a shift in belief. Just the way sound creates visable waves as it travels through a droplet of water, our 'belief waves' ripple through the quantum fabric of the universe to become our bodies and the healing, abundance and peace-or disease, lack, and suffering- that we experience in life. And just the way we can tune a sound to change it's patterns, we can tune our beliefs to preserve or destroy all that we cherish, including life it's self. In a malleable world where everything from atoms to cells is changing to match our beliefs we're limited only by the way we think of ourselves in that world.
Is desire to remove the self a true desire, and thus still attached to an ego of sorts? Is even the desire to be divine for the self?
Until you get the upper hand on ego, you must negotiate with it. That means desire and all the rest. Desire falls away on it's own after a while. It is the nature of this world that if you chase after something, it will run from you. Chase after nothing. it comes chasing after you. When you desire, your whole life will be based around the acquisition of things attached to that desire. Including "God". Have no desire (to possess), you really do own it all. x
