Tag Archives: Experience

Illucidations, Tools for Evolution

Your Conversation with The Universe

Everything you experience, from your waking life, dreams, and other states of consciousness, is “the Universe” talking to you.  Your response in moment  to moment choices, conscious or otherwise, is you talking to “the Universe”.

A simple statement, perhaps, but within it are some very profitable concepts.

What do I mean by “The Universe”?  In this case, I mean “All That Is”. I could say “God”, but I would mean “All That Is”. What if what you’re experiencing is unpleasant or painful?   You would then have to examine the choices you made to be at that place and that time. Then use that as a lesson. Make choices which allow you to express a more enhanced version of yourself. Make changes in yourself. That is you responding to “The Universe”.

Mental and emotional experiences are as real as physical experiences, and mental and emotional choices are as significant as physical choices. You can take advantage of this by using your imagination, your creation slate,  to experience things more in line with a more enhanced version of yourself, whatever you decide that to be. Bottom line, focus your consciousness where you want it to be. Add focus time (chosen experience) where you want to learn and grow.

Take/make 2 experiences and call me in the morning.  🙂

Seymour Lovejoy

Seymour_Lovejoy_Photo_edited-6

Illucidations

What do you take? What do you leave?

Comedian George Carlin had a wonderful routine about “stuff” that directly addressed the issue of what to take and what to leave, i.e. if you go on a vacation, what do you take with you? Then, if while there you get invited to stay the night somewhere, what subset of your stuff do you take with you? His delivery is hilarious.

But let’s ask the same question in several other contexts?

Suppose you’re a handyman, it’s Saturday morning and you have 3 appointments scheduled. Based upon the appointments you may take a general purpose toolbox, and perhaps several other tools to fit the specific needs of the appointments. And then your wife gives you a “honey-do” list for the day and tells you to remember your lunch… and “can you bring something back for dinner?” If you wish to keep your wife and your clients happy, it would behoove you to be organized and have all your “to-do’s” written down in an organized fashion, and take with you all the tools and paperwork required.

So let’s say you get your truck loaded, you check your list, open the garage door and drive away to the day’s adventure. What did you take, and what did you leave? 1) You took you consciousness and your capabilities, you took the things you needed for the day, and all your experience and beliefs, and all your expectations as to what will happen, what time you will return, and your feelings and sensations. 2) You left the world you call “home”, i.e. house, wife, family, dog, and related categories, and all your accumulation of stuff.

You’ve all heard the question: “Would there be a sound if a tree fell in the forest and no one (and no instrument) was there to hear it?” So here’s another question. Is “home” still in existence when you leave it, taking your consciousness to another environ? Whether or not your home continues to exist in perceived “physicality”, you expect that it persists and that, for the most part, it will not have changed when you return. And dependent on the forces of the moment, you’ll get what you expect.

But let’s look at this from another angle. How are you adding to and enhancing your experience, and the experience of others, and what are your “takeaways”? What do you take with you when you leave any environ? Your experiences and your conclusions (which are experiences too), i.e. what you learn. The book of Deuteronomy has a great suggestion, something to the effect of: “I have set before you Life and Death. Therefore choose Life.” So take those experiences that come to you, learn from them, be joyful, and move on to the next experience.

–Seymour Lovejoy

Seymour_Lovejoy_Photo_edited-6

Tools for Evolution

On Belief and Disbelief

I find it interesting that people frequently express disbelief in the possibility of something, while sitting right in front of them, pervading all experience is existence itself, and they have no problem accepting that! That is, if existence is possible, why couldn’t anything else be, imaginable or not?

Of course existence itself, and its cousins, awareness and experience, are unfathomable in scope, so the easy way to deal with them is to ignore them in our day-to-day lives and relegate them to philosophy class.

From the moment we begin accumulating experiences and associating them with pleasure and pain, we accumulate a value system which guides our choices. We tend to trust those people and experiences that bring us pleasure and distrust those that bring us pain. But because experiences are additive, when those that gave us pleasure or comfort in the past all of a sudden bring us pain, it can be confusing and can result in perverted perspectives, such as can result in children of abusive parents, where what is thought of as “love” can be twisted. Similarly, if someone attends a party and accidentally spills something on his clothes and is embarrassed, he may avoid future parties to avoid the pain he now associates with parties, when, in reality, fear of embarrassment, and not parties, is the issue.

For this reason, the Teachers urge each of us to question everything and examine the sources of our beliefs. Parents can be in error, tradition can be in error, schools can be in error, society can be in error. The earth turned out not to be flat!

So who and what do you believe? I love what my Tai Chi teacher, David Cheng, a Taoist master humorously said, “Don’t trust your mind too much. It’s barely good enough to earn a living!”

Perhaps some of the best advice comes from Jesus: “By their fruits ye shall know them”. Is there love (joyful acceptance and joyful giving) and its fruit, kindness, or is there fear and its fruits, anger and cruelty?

So how do you feel about what you’re reading? Does it resonate with you?

–Seymour Lovejoy

Seymour_Lovejoy_Photo_edited-6