Questioning Ourselves

What makes us unique as animals is our ability to think. That is, our ability to ask ourselves questions about the world, and things in it, and create new information that answers those questions. We look at the sea and ask ourselves, "How can I cross this?" and from that question, the idea of a boat is born. "How can I feed myself, and my family?" and the ideas of hunting and farming are born. "How can I be happy?" and many the many ideas that make a life are born.

However, the real power of asking oneself questions doesn't come to pass until one begins to question oneself. Until that point comes, we are simply using this amazing tool of thinking in a reactive way, to satisfy primitive needs and live the lives of enhanced animals. "How can I defeat my enemy?" is asked, and new weapons are devised for this purpose. For an animal, defeating one's enemy is a matter of survival. However, for a human, it eventually becomes a recipe for disaster.

It is when we ask ourselves questions like, "Why is it so important for me to defeat my enemy?" or "Why does it make me so angry when I lose an argument?" or "Why do I feel the need to judge others?" that we make the leap from enhanced animal to divine being. At that point, we create for ourselves a power of choice that no other animal has ever even conceived of. We can put aside our instincts and operate on a higher plane of being. We not only learn ways to live with the enhanced power our thinking capacity has harnessed for us, we also transcend the confines of an animal nature to live lives that only our imagination could conceive.

When we learn to question ourselves, we gain our true humanity, and our greatest potential.

Jim

It All Points to You

In Chapter 2, we talk about reality as an experiential phenomenon. That is, experience is an essential quality of reality, and without it, there is no reality at all. Quantum physics describes this as superposition, where all possible realities potentially exist together, but none of them actually exists. From a personal level, it means that experience is the outer boundary of reality. There is nothing that is beyond it. Even the idea of something beyond it exists within experience.

But what can we say about experience, and experiencing? What are its significant elements? In the book we talk about experiences which are always present, such as locality in time and space (everything is experienced here and now), but what stands out about experience itself?

Every experience is YOUR experience. The entire Universe exists because YOU are experiencing it. The experience is literally directed toward you. Consider the most distant galaxies, and their light, travelling billions of light years directly toward where you will be when it arrives HERE, NOW. Now you might be inclined to think that there's a lot of light that travels everywhere else, too, but that's not the relevant matter. It's the fact that everything out there has reached out to YOU that matters. From every direction, the Universe comes to you.

You are always in the middle of everything pointing inward, reaching back to here and now and YOU. You might be inclined to think that there are many of us, all subject to equal attention by experience, but the experience is the same for each of us. We all are touched by Everything through the phenomenon of "I experience". The whole of existence is a first-person phenomenon in this way. Even if you forget that we are all one "I", we are all still One in that each of us is at the center of time and space, reached out to from all directions by the entire Universe through the connection of experience.

Remember this the next time you feel insignificant, or like you don't matter. You are God, and you can see it all around you, the Universe pointing at YOU.

Facing Inner Problems

We are often inclined to think that the problems we face within ourselves are not nearly so difficult to overcome as those that come from without. And I believe that most of the advice we receive, be it from friends, self-help books, etc. tends to reinforce this idea.

When we face an outward problem, like looking for a job, solving a dispute with a friend, or coping with a major setback, we are facing not only things that are within our control, but many things that are not. On the other hand, goes the conventional wisdom, inner problems contain only elements we can control, so they should be much easier to deal with. Whether that problem is an addiction, a fear to be overcome, or low self-esteem, it can be dealt with by a simple change in attitude, being willing to take the time to get organized, or "getting off your butt" and changing yourself.

Well, after 44 years of life, I'm fairly convinced that that is nonsense, and that our inner problems are, in fact, the most difficult hurdles we will face in life. And I believe that the idea that they should be easy to solve only contributes to that difficulty.

Consider the alcoholic, or the procrastinator, or the nervous eater. It seems like all they would have to do is stop participating in their bad habits, exert a little willpower, and their problem would be solved. However, if this is the case, why do each of them continue in their self-damaging habits, in spite of a great deal of guilt and painful feelings of failure? These problems are more difficult because they involve our relationship with our self (Ch. 3). We take these behaviors and we identify with them, and if we do not like them, we experience the pain of not liking ourselves. This pain undermines our confidence, which in turn weakens our resolve to battle our bad habits. This pain also demands comforting, which our bad habits, more often than not, were taken up to provide in the first place, setting the stage for a vicious cycle. Adding a belief that it should be easy only adds fuel to the fire.

The good thing is, when we do overcome our inner problems, we move forward toward the greater happiness we desire in our life. And while it does require great courage and determination to win these battles, one shouldn't have to fight unreasonable beliefs that they would be easy to solve if not for some personal shortcoming.

Jim