Mar
11
Moe Dialogues #1
Filed Under Awakening
Moe’s Question: Dogs best friend, Moe, asks question 1) If I really wanted to experience being awake could I?…in other words am I choosing at some level to keep sleep walking?
Dear Moe,
There are many presuppositions in what you have written. To deal with them all would take a lot of writing. I will start down that road just to show you what it is like: I have agreed to answer ten questions you pose to me, but already, in your first question, you have snuck in two questions. So, Moe, we know you are sneaky, and I suspect, from the little I “know” of you so far, that it was not your intention to be sneaky; it was not something you wanted or chose. It was just something you did, probably without even noticing.
If I am correct and you didn’t notice yourself asking two questions, but did it anyway, can we assume that you do things without noticing? That would seem to be a fair assumption: Are you with me? If that is the case a simple question arises. That question is: How much of what is going on with you are you aware of? Are you aware of your heart beating? Not can you be, but were you. Are you aware of your left big toe? Your motorcycle? Your current connection with Tracey? Your sexual preference? Your current degree of hunger?
I suspect and am, in fact, quite sure that you were not aware of any of those things until you read them and then became aware of them. You were forced to be aware of each in a stimulus (my written words)–response (your thinking of the words) fashion. I suspect, and can easily prove that you are not very aware of what is going on with you–ever. You miss almost everything almost all the time. As do I. Since you miss almost everything all the time let’s start our exploration from something way closer to the truth than where we usually start. Let’s start with the assumption that you miss almost everything almost all the time.
Starting from there the first thing that might make sense is to take anything you think with a grain of salt. And, take anything you become aware of, notice, with a mountain of gratitude. Continually bask in the reverence of all you are missing, without having to be specific about what you are aware of, because specificity is a particular kind of preferential mix of attention and control. Bask in “not knowing”, in not being aware of nearly everything. Let “not knowing” fill you up, pick you up, brush you off, and send you on your way to your next knowing.
The first of your two questions reveals that you think you can, by what you want, determine what happens with you. In other words, wanting is somehow in charge of something. You confirm this philosophy by using the word choosing in the second question. Choosing reinforces your presupposition of volition which I suggest is anthropomorphic. It is attributing human characteristics to a sufficiently limited aspect of you, so limited that it doesn’t capture enough humanity to be called human. People continually think they are in control of their lives, or in control of something, that they can wake up when they wish, or eat when they want to, or get angry by their own volition or choice. I find little, in fact no, evidence for this rampant supposition. If, rather than starting from a rather horribly flawed model of “free choice” in which you sign up for control only to be hit, really hard, by the train of consequences that always smashes us after an erroneous beginning, you assume that you have no choice at all and that you are completely automated, then, and likely only then, will you be much closer to what is the case. Beginning from this opposite premise you threaten who you have pretended to be; which is a kind of ti
me release suffering.
If you get caught in the loop of thinking you want to wake up, but you can’t wake up, but you want to wake up, but you don’t know how to wake up, then you are in fact beating yourself. You are abusing yourself by opening the door to the idea that things are other than they “should” be, or other than you “want” them to be, or other than you “chose” them to be. And you embed the idea that you actually have any clue about how things are, which we have hopefully proven that you do not. With that door open it is simply you against how things are. That is a war you can fight forever but can’t ever win. You don’t know how things are, you will never know how things are, so the whole goofy dance of having them try and be a specific way when you don’t even know how they are or will be dips you into absurdity. Absurdity is being in the presence of nothing while imagining you are in the presence of something.
You wanting (waking) is no more connected to your experience (of waking) than it is to anything else. You would like there to be a causal or at least personally intimate connection between the two. In other words, you wish to define yourself as a worthwhile human being because you can experience waking up when you want to. If you, even for a few days, were in charge of what you experience (which is a conspiracy, at least currently, between attention and what you call truth) you would drive yourself absolutely wiggy. We have been put on automatic pilot purely on purpose. You wouldn’t put a three year old in charge of our nation. You wouldn’t let a three year old drive you down the highway on your motorcycle, with you on the back, arms around the three year olds waist with complete trust.
We simply think that we are mature and able. We perceive that we are old enough to play with matches, or knives, or bombs, or relationships, when we aren’t actually even mature, able or grown enough to be in charge of our own experience, senses, thoughts, attention, or will. We, thankfully, aren’t in charge of any of those things. When we are sufficiently responsible, and hopefully not a moment before, we will be in charge.
You came here to Earth to play. Some people play by trying to make enough money to buy a house or a car. Some come here to have a child, some to do a job, some to save the world, some to wake up. There was probably a time, at the beginning of a game, when you said you wanted a child; whether you heard yourself say this or not is really only relevant to you. You said you wanted a child. And then, sometime later or earlier you had one. It would be really cool if you said you wanted a child somewhat before you had one, then had one, and then wanted one even more. And still want one, since you have one. For many people they don’t have a clue that they want a child before they have one, while they are having one, or ever. Having a child is a game. It is a game when you don’t have one to want something you don’t yet have. It is a game after you have one to want something you do have.
At this moment, and probably for a while, you have a game called “waking up.” You are at some stage in that game, and the stage you are in is before waking up while wanting waking up. It, like everything else, is just a stage. In this stage you have to think that waking up is the prize and that when you wake up life will be better. The parts of yourself that know better keep quiet as you throw your weight behind this game. At some point it is likely that you will wake up (the causes and conditions of this we will get to with later questions). At that point you will be very happy and thankful for about 18 seconds. Those 18 seconds will be followed by the discovery that what you were after (waking up), isn’t the least bit like what you thought it would be. In fact, that waking up is substantially worse than not waking up. That waking up imposes a new kind of responsibility and results in ever greater segregation from others. The responsibility I speak of here is the ability to respond, not the burden most people perceive responsibility to be. The segregation I speak of is paired with integration. But when attention goes just to the segregation, you experience a loneliness few people actually want. And when you focus just on the twin, integration, it is the melting of oneself into others so fully that you lose any possibility of personal.
So, rather than going on, and on, and on, which I suspect you know by now I could, let’s just make the answers to your questions simple:
If I really wanted to experience being awake could I? Nope…in other words am I choosing at some level to keep sleep walking? Yes
Love, Jerry
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One Response to “Moe Dialogues #1”
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It’s a question that deserves an answer that matches the sincerity.
You can’t experience being awake , you can only experience “calibration” to a designated “awake state”. And then once you recognise the calibration criteria you can match the “awake state”.
But don’t expect Fanfares and Angels and “goody gumdr0ps from heaven” … all calibration is mechanical and all experience is caused. And all goals once reached become “mere details” of your personal past history.
Being awake .. ultimately means being awake to the “veneer” of achievements.
That is why all of the “enlightened” recede in some way from the world that the majority live in, it’s not worth the effort to “convince” yourself that achievement “means” something as arbitrary and as valid as failure.
(gee I wish I could edit these after I post them … but such is life)
If this leaves you confused , imagine if it didn’t.