Peace

In the dualistic perspective, peace feels a certain way and peaceful people look and act a certain way.

This is a trap. It keeps us striving to achieve this thing we think of as peace. But by this very definition, peace, in this sense, must have an opposite. This opposite would be any state or action that we would think of as not peaceful (such as agitation, restlessness, upset, anger, annoyance, violence, war, etc.).

Since this "peaceful" state is held up by many as a sign of enlightenment or as a path to enlightenment, we see it as desirable, worthy of our effort, worthy of our striving. The common supposition is that if we strive to achieve a state of peace, we will be closer to enlightenment. What most people don't see is the contradiction inherent in that. Strive for peace. Hmmm...

So, in this dualistic perspective, what happens to us when "non-peaceful" states arise? We are compelled to change them. We must fight against them. We must strive to remain or return to a state of peacefulness. In other words, we must become less peaceful. We are trapped. Trapped by our lack of understanding about what true peace is.

The way out of this trap is to realize the limitations of our imagined idea of peace. For many, the imagined idea of peace is that when we achieve it, we will no longer feel any of those "opposite" qualities of peace. In other words, we will no longer experience feelings of agitation, distress or anxiety--any state that could be thought of as "not peace."

And THAT, that belief that peace feels and looks one way, but not another, is what keeps us trapped. True peace is an understanding that ALL states of mind, ALL thoughts, ALL feelings and ALL behaviors, are simply forms of the One/the Absolute--including agitation, distress, and anxiety. True peace is realizing that nothing about these states of being needs to change (including the desire to change them). Nothing needs to be made to be other than what it is.

This is the peace we are striving for, and it is already here.

This is the Higher Level

There's this misconception out there--one that I held, too--that once someone is "enlightened" or "realized" that they will suddenly become more loving, kinder, more tolerant.  To put it frankly--what a crock of sh*t.

One of the people I considered a teacher of mine used to say, "I lie." I used to think it was because it wasn't possible for her not to lie, since from a metaphysical point of view, you could say nothing is true. However, now I see that she may have also been saying, "I lie," meaning, she's a person who lies, knows she lies when she could be telling the truth and lies anyway.

When people behave badly in traffic; I get pissed. Has any of that changed, since I got my final answer? No, absolutely not. Because understanding what's really happening here doesn't change anything!  I don't have more control over myself. I haven't become a more loving person. I'm not improved or evolved. I just see now that whatever happens is as it should be, including "a woman stole my parking spot" and "I chased her down and called her rude." That's what happened (although that of course is a story of the past).

And this makes sense to me. If "God is everything" or there is such a thing as the Absolute, or however you want to say that, then everything is God. Everything. Nothing can be excluded from that, including the things that "we" think of as "bad," like lying, cheating, stealing, killing, etc.

There's this popular belief right now that human beings are evolving to a higher level; a higher level, meaning a level where we will no longer do those "bad" things that the so-called unevolved beings that we are right now are currently doing. We'll no longer have things like war, global warming, violence in the home, violence in our thoughts, gossip, malice, etc.  We use this arbitrary measuring stick of goodness to try to control ourselves and others; to separate ourselves from Truth and Reality (in other words, what is happening right now) and reinforce our sense of identity.

Have we considered that the supposed higher level we are all evolving to is really just understanding that this is all there is? This is it. This--what's happening right now--is the higher level.