You are God playing dress ups..

” Go to America and tell everyone you’re God and they’ll lock you up in a mental institution. Go to India and tell everyone you’re God and they’ll say to you ” what took you so long to figure it out?”

– Allan Watts

That quote from Allan Watts really sums up how we view God in the West as opposed to the East. I have nothing against religion or how anyone views God, I grew up in a Christian faith being taught God is an almighty entity that created us and the world, that we have free will and can choose between good and evil.

WHAT I COULDN’T COME TO TERMS WITH..

One question I constantly had growing up with this view of God was if God was all powerful and all knowing etc then the substance all everything must be God, God and it’s creation must be the same, If God created everything then he must’ve created good and evil…

I was told that the devil created evil, that we have free will, that we aren’t God but his creation etc but my point was if evil was from the devil didn’t God create the devil? I had many questions that I won’t go into but my whole point was is God was so powerful then shouldn’t he be the substance of all things and the creator of all things and if he wasn’t then there must’ve been something greater..

ENTER BUDDHISM/ HINDUISM PHILOSOPHY

One thing that drew me to the teachings of the east was they were teaching what I long suspected, that the ultimate nature of reality, in Hinduism what they call “Brahman” is the substance of all things. Sure there is creation and there may or may not be more powerful beings but the fact remained when you boil it down, good evil, gods, humans, life death etc, the nature of all things and of all experience comes from the one source and you are that source.

YOU ARE GOD PLAYING DRESS UPS

From a western upbringing, saying you are God or hearing you are God sounds like the ultimate ego trip. We must understand though when they say you are God they mean the essence of what you are and the essence of everything is God, in other words there are no two things, there is no separation. The most purest person is god and the most evil is god, the most richest and the most poorest, the most beautiful and the most ugly etc…

We can paint a scene depicting heaven and hell on a canvas. We can say one side is better or worse but in the end it’s all just canvas, remove the canvas and the painting full of separation, judgment, good and evil, all the opposites go with it, you are the canvas not a image on it.

” The Face of God can be seen wherever the eyes falls”

If you want to see the face of God look in the mirror but also be sure to look in every direction and at everything and every person, it’s all one and all god.

When we dream at night we experience countless people, places and things but in the end the whole creation is created from a single source, the dreamers mind, who we think we are, our ego self is just a dream within gods mind, your mind.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF THIS NEW UNDERSTANDING

So how does it affect your life when you view yourself and God this way?

When you view God this way it makes you more understanding and accepting of life and of others. Unconditional love is another way of saying unconditional acceptance and isn’t life always like that?

Before we judge something good or bad, right or wrong hasn’t it already been accepted otherwise it wouldn’t be happening? The essence of what we are is the essence of all life and that essence is always allowing and accepting what is.

Our judgments and opinions come after the fact. Our true self accepts all, loves all, it’s our ego that judges and separates and it’s not a bad thing, to experience a world we must have the illusion of separation and our ego does a great job of doing that as it is it’s purpose, the trap we fall into though is believing we are our ego.

YOU ARE HUMAN YET DIVINE

You are not a mistake, you are not in need of fixing or need to feel worthless, you are human and all those traits and flaws are part of the package of the human experience. We experience all the hardships and suffering of being human but we mustn’t fall into the trap of believing it’s all we are. We experience all this imperfection because we are perfect, we feel so small and meaningless because we are great and meaningful. Life is the ultimate paradox it can’t be understood by the mind because it’s beyond mind.

I’ll leave it at that for now, thanks for reading,

Simon Coleman.

Meditation: actively doing nothing…

We live in a world of appearances. Seeing someone exercising, constantly moving, puffing and sweating we would look at all that activity and probably say ” Wow they are really getting some work done, they are really making changes to their body.

Appearances can be deceiving though, while yes we can look at someone exercising and based on all the action we see assume correctly so that they are making a difference to their body and life, we may look at someone sitting perfectly still, eyes closed and assume they are doing nothing at all.

What is good for the body is to keep it moving, to keep pushing it to its limits. Our minds though are completely different, what is good for our minds is a period of stillness, of doing nothing. While doing nothing sounds like a waste of time in a world where we are constantly on the move, at times less is more and it’s especially the case in regards to our mind and meditation.

Meditation is the act of actively doing nothing. So how to we practice actively doing nothing? It’s quite simple, just sit, just sit and watch. We are so used to watching life go by, so used to getting swept up in our thoughts, feelings and emotions, constantly judging and labelling everything. Meditation is a break from all that mental effort, it’s all about just watching non judgmentally.

So how do we go about this practically? Our body and mind are linked. Sitting still, keeping our body still is important because we want all our awareness on what’s going on mentally not physically. Constant movement of the body steals our attention and distracts us which is why we sit still. While sitting still tends to slow the mind and thoughts, our goal isn’t to stop thinking or get upset if thoughts keep coming, our only goal is to sit and watch ” from a distance” how our minds operate non judgmentally.

A scientist studying the behaviour of a monkey in a lab isn’t going to be judgmental of the behaviour and actions of the monkey, the scientist is just there to observe and take notes. Meditation is exactly the same, we are there just to simply watch how our mind operates.

So what’s the point of all this? The point is to realise once you know how something operates, once you know how a trap operates you are free from it. Watching our thoughts and feelings come and go, seeing them come out of nothing and dissolve back into nothing makes us realise that if we can see the coming and going of every thought and feeling that none of these that we put so much time and energy into is worth worrying about or identifying with.

Clouds pass by in the sky, the clouds could be light and breezy or dark and filled with rain, lightening flashes, thunder booms, all these things happen in the sky but not to the sky. The sky is much greater and holds all these things within it yet it doesn’t identify or is affected by any of it.

Through constant meditation you will come to see that every thought, feeling, sensation and perception that we all experience and identify with ultimately has nothing to do with us or who we are at our core. All the things we experience are just impersonal passing phenomena that we identify with which many times causes us unnecessary suffering.

The act of mediation is about getting in touch and visiting our true self, diving underneath all the thoughts and feelings we identify with to arrive at our core which is ultimately, nothing. We are ultimately nothing, timeless and dimensionless, but the nothingness we are is ultimately what allows everything to be. We are nothing which is why we experience everything, it’s the perfect example of the Ying Yang principle in action.

I’ll leave it at that for now, thanks for reading.

Simon Coleman.

You are not good enough and never will be..

You are not good enough and never will be.

The statement sounds really negative but it’s true. It’s true yet it’s a good thing. We are always striving to become better in one way or another, no matter how much we succeed or achieve we always feel we could do more, be in a little better shape, make a bit more extra money, work on our character flaws or insecurities etc.

We are never perfect and never will be which is what makes life so enjoyable, it gives us something to do in this life. I always liken my life to a movie, the best movies have drama, adversity, struggles, failures and success. A movie or a life where everything is perfect, nothing ever goes wrong etc would become boring very quickly.

Our flaws and not feeling good enough is what makes us human and is what makes other people relate to us and connect with us. When we are ” rough around the edges” it gives other people something to grab onto so we can relate and connect, if we were perfect, smooth and flawless nothing can be clung onto, we’d be perfect but out of touch.

Think about your close friends or family members that you love, you probably know an insecure one, a constantly grumpy one, one that is a know it all but knows nothing really etc, the list goes on…but for all their faults and flaws to we hate them? Of course not, their flaws and habits are what give them their unique character and it’s the same with us, the flaws we try to improve make us who we are and our loved ones love us regardless.

There is nothing wrong with self improvement, I’m a big believer in constant improvement in every aspect of life but we must remember that we will never be good enough and that’s perfectly ok. If we delve down the spiritual path we will realise our true self, the self of all things is always totally perfect and flawless, it’s our ego self they never feels good enough and wants to constantly improve and their is nothing wrong with that.

When you venture down the spiritual path you will eventually come to realise that we are flawed because we are ultimately flawless, we are imperfect because we are ultimately perfect. All of life is ultimately a paradox that our minds can’t comprehend, all of life operates under the ying yang principle, all we have, had and will ever have is just this moment, so we should embrace whatever arises in it, all the perfection, imperfection, goodness and bad is always exactly as it should be.

You will never be perfect but that doesn’t mean to stop trying to be.

Thanks for reading have a great day guys.

Simon Coleman

Spiritual practice, a journey to this moment.

I’m not sure what others have experienced or have expected following a spiritual path but speaking from my own experience, when I was starting out, I always thought it was about becoming a better person, a good or nicer person.

I grew up in religion and have nothing against it, everyone should be free to do what makes them happy. One thing I found though following a religion was the sense and feeling of not being good enough, feeling guilty over thoughts and actions that were deemed ” bad”.

When I first moved onto the teachings of Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta again I thought it was about turning into a more positive, decent, nicer person. Like religion, again I started beating myself up over not living up to what I thought I was supposed to be or do.

Over time I started to realise and am hoping to get anyone that reads this and may be in the situation I was to realise is that the spiritual path isn’t about improving ourselves it’s about accepting ourselves. When we realise that everything is from the one source, that every thought, feeling and action is totally natural and totally as it should be, over time we can begin to accept ourselves as we are and others how they are.

We ultimately are nothing we experience yet at the same time everything we experience, life is the ultimate paradox it can’t be understood by the mind because our mind deals in black and white, it only sees opposites yet all opposites need each other to exist.

Want to embrace and appreciate your good qualities and those qualities in others? Well we must ultimately accept and embrace the darkness in ourselves and others, all the parts of ourselves we don’t want to accept as a part of us must be accepted. Accepting our dark and negative traits doesn’t make us bad people because we all have a dark and negative side, trying to ignore, suppress or get rid of traits we feel are undesirable ultimately leads to suffering because we are trying to change reality, trying to change what the moment is presenting us.

What I’ve found and hopefully you will come to see if you haven’t already is that the spiritual path isn’t a path of improvement, that’s a job for our ego to do, but behind our ego, behind who we think we are our true self lies and when we realise that ourselves and everything else is always perfect how it is we can finally exhale and feel a sense of inner peace.

All this sounds nice in theory but a spiritual practice of remembering who and what we truly are, realising that everything is ultimately as it should be and learning to let life flow where it wants to takes daily practice.

When it’s all said and done all we are realising and coming back to is just this moment. This moment is reality regardless of how we feel about it, it is what it is. The more we accept ourselves and things as they are, the more we give up trying to control things, the more we let go and realise we don’t ultimately have control that it’s just an illusion, the more we can just sit back and watch the movie we call ” our life” unfold.

To live a balanced life I feel we must realise that reality really is an illusion much like a dream but at the same time learn to function in the dream. Whether we live the life of a monk or successful business person doesn’t matter as long as we learn to not take life too seriously, laugh when we can, cry when we can and accept that we will never be perfect and that’s perfectly ok.

This moment is it. No one or no religion can explain how or why we are alive. Reality can’t be understood, it’s the biggest miracle of all that we know this is all happening, You are alive, that’s all you’ve ever known for sure, the rest is just beliefs, opinions and ideas.

You aren’t living a life you’re the essence of life itself, you and life are always perfect, even trying to change it is perfect too.

Thanks for reading,

Simon Coleman.

Everyone is just searching for happiness.

Everyone is searching for happiness, the whole point of life is to do what makes us happy. I used to wonder many times why people do what they do and why I do what I do. Many times we do things that cause us or others pain or keep repeating the same mistakes over and over even when we know it’s wrong.

I came to realise in time that all the good things and bad things in the world all stem from people trying to find happiness. Ultimately what we view as good or bad is our own opinion, most of us would be shocked and angered by acts of terrorism for instance but in the minds of the terrorists they are doing what is right and doing what they think will bring them happiness.

What brings us happiness or what we think we bring us happiness is our own opinion obviously, realising this though can help us understand others so much better. We can go through this life with more understanding and less hate in our hearts when we realise everyone else is just like us, we all want the same thing, happiness.

In religion or spiritual teachings we are taught to show love and compassion to everyone but it can be sometimes hard when we view others and their actions superficially. Being understanding of the actions of others doesn’t mean we have to approve of their actions or be their friends it just means realising that everyone is trying to find happiness in this life, unfortunately some people feel hurting or taking advantage of others is the way to do it.

In my younger years I world truly resent and hate people I felt caused me harm or took advantage of me in some way but as I started realising that no one is truly perfect, we are all messed up in some way or another and some people due to their upbringing, circumstances or the pain they are feeling internally do or say things to others they think will make them happy.

Hurt people hurt other people. No one I feel wants to find happiness hurting others but we live in a world of so many broken people through no fault of their own, there are no evil babies, the conditioning and environment we all grow up in is out of our control.

One of the biggest realisations we can come to on the road to seeking inner peace and happiness is realising who we really are, not who we think we are, not our name, age, job, body etc not those labels but what we are prior to those labels. When we look inward and through meditation and self enquiry realise what we essentially are is identical with everyone and everything else we slowly start feeling more connected, we start realising we aren’t in the universe we are the universe.

The whole point of life as it’s presented to us, where we feel we are a person moving through time and space is to find love and happiness. What we are ultimately trying to find is ourselves. The essence of what we all truly are is love and happiness, it’s like a wave in the ocean trying to find the ocean, the ocean is playing games with itself, the wave is always the ocean.

Our life is just the universe playing games with itself, if we knew 100% that it was all just a dream and taking life as seriously as we do was unnecessary it would kill the fun of it all. Deep down we love feeling the highs and lows of life, we say we love the highs but we truly love the lows too it’s what gives life meaning and purpose overcoming hardships.

To find true happiness we must realise the essence of what we and what everyone else truly is and also realise every action that we or others perform regardless of how we perceive or judge the actions is coming from a place of trying to find happiness. We are all one in the end, the world is a mirror to ourselves so a little compassion and understanding goes a long way.

Thanks for reading,

Simon Coleman.

What if life was meaningless…

What is the meaning of life? What if there was no meaning? If there was no meaning hearing this at first may sound depressing but like everything else in life it’s how we interpret it.

If nothing we have, are or will do matters then what’s the point of doing anything you may ask….Well we can look at it another way too, if nothing matters then why sit around doing nothing? Why not get out there and just enjoy what life has to offer?

What’s the meaning of a bird, a tree, water, the sun etc? What’s the meaning of anything? What you will come to realise is none of these have a meaning, they like everything in life just are. A tree just is, a bird just is, they have no meaning yet they are. We can’t explain why everything is because life was always here prior to the language that describes it, language is just sounds, we are trying to use sounds to explain something prior to sound..

We must also remember that everything in life arises in pairs, in opposites, we can only know good if we know bad, we can only know darkness if we know light, we can only know self if we know other etc. if we never asked the question ” what’s the meaning of life?” The answer wouldn’t need to be searched for. All answers and questions arise together as well, no answer is needed when no question is asked.

So if there is no purpose or meaning to all of this should we stop trying to stop or prevent the worlds problems? Should we stop caring about our friends and family, should we all just kill our selves? No we shouldn’t. What we should realise is that life is what we make it, we should do what we are drawn to do without overthinking too much.

If we have the urge to raise a family we should, if we have the urge to live a simple life or a rich life we should, if we have the urge to become famous or become a monk we should. We must realise that there is no wrong of right way to do life, even if we pursue a life deemed to be ” bad” we must do so with the understanding that we won’t be punished for our sins but by our sins, if we go around doing bad deeds it’s bound to come back to us due to the fact that people we hurt usually seek revenge.

Life is an absolute mystery, we can’t explain why everything is, it just is. Even when we feel we are doing life wrong we must realise we can never do life wrong as what we are is the essence of life itself. We weren’t born into this world we were born out of it, our bodies are ” walking earth” we all have fears, doubts, success and failure, it’s part of being human, at the end of the day life only has the meaning we give it, so get out there and enjoy it to the fullest!

Thanks for reading, liking and subscribing guys, have a nice day.

Simon Coleman.

If we are all one….

” We are all one!” It’s a common phrase in spirituality but if we are all one, if everything is coming from the one source, why then does it not appear that way?

When I first ventured down the spiritual path I was fascinated about the idea of ” enlightenment” I viewed it as the point where my sense of self would disappear and I would feel one with all things, in a sense not knowing where I ended and the rest of the world began… it may sound crazy but I truly felt that’s what it must be all about…

Over time I started to realise that it can’t possibly mean that, if we didn’t know where we began or ended how could we experience anything? When we fall into deep sleep we are in a sense ” one with all our experience” in deep sleep there is no self, no world, no other, there is no reference point where we can say ” I’m here and everything else is there”

In deep sleep we experience nothing yet we still exist, deep sleep is the most peaceful state as nothing is happening, no time, space, self or world. We can say in a sense that it is the enlightened state. When we enter the dream state or the waking state though a sense of self located at a single point is experienced that we call ” I” this self has defined boundaries, we need those boundaries to experience everything we are apparently not.

The movie screen when no movie is playing is just a blank screen, no movie is playing yet the screen exists, when a movie starts playing on the screen the blank, undivided screen starts to appear to split up into countless changing scenery, people and things, it appears like a world of separation but the reality is the screen is never divided.

Now back to our experience , if deep sleep is the ” movie screen” of our life and when the waking state or dream state emerges we start to experience a body, a world, time and space, self and other etc then we must come to realise that all this separation is just an illusion.

The movie screen can exist without the movie , but the movie can’t exist without the screen.

Our true self, pure consciousness, can exist without the the world but the world can’t exist without us.

We don’t appear within the world, the world appears within us, and by us I mean all reality is coming from the one source and you are that reality, the self we mistake ourself to be can be likened to a character in a movie. When we realise what we truly are the world still looks exactly the same, it appears separate the only difference is we stop believing it’s separate, lucid dreaming, the experience of realising you are dreaming while dreaming would be a close example.

” Enlightenment” once this is realised, doesn’t become something that we try to obtain or transform into, it becomes the process of seeing through the stories and illusions we and others tell us. How the world appears never changes we just stop believing in appearances.

The way we perceive this world is ultimately inverted, we experience time because we are timeless, we experience space because we are dimensionless, we experience separation because we are one, life is the ultimate paradox and our ego minds can’t comprehend a paradox, it can only understand opposites yet opposites are always one.

You are much greater than you think, all that’s required to realise it.

Thanks for reading,

Simon Coleman.