Our mind defines us and the world around us. We adamantly hold our mind's view as reality and fear to think differently for if we let go our mind we'd lose it and be lost. That's how our mind controls us. If lost, what would replace it, who would we then be? The undifferentiated mind, the mind of God....
The Shawshank Redemption is a story of men serving life sentences in a brutal penitentiary. The penitentiary is a metaphor for living in society. Most of us live our entire lives in a penitentiary. But in The Shawshank Redemption, as in society generally, a few have a chance at redemption, freedom: Brooks Hatlen, an old man who managed the prison library; Andy Dufresne, a banker wrongly imprisoned for the murder of his wife and her lover; and Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding, a prison contraband smuggler. After 50 years of “good behavior” (a model prisoner serving others as a librarian; a kind man who cares for an injured bird) Brooks is free to leave. However, a sentence well-served, like a life well-served, doesn’t guarantee redemption. For Brooks there is no redemption. Redemption requires letting go of our past where we are imprisoned by our mind. While excited at the prospect of freedom, Brooks can't part with his identity as a prison librarian and embrace the freedom that awaits him. He becomes depressed and hangs himself soon upon his release. Andy is like everyman, not deserving punishment but punished nonetheless, forced to serve a role in life that's not to his liking. He makes the most of his life in prison but for years devotes his time and energy on digging a tunnel from his cell to freedom outside the prison walls. On the day of his escape, he emerges from a hole in the earth, essentially reborn. Once free, like all free men he leaves the roles society has slotted him to live carefree in a beachfront village, presumably without risk of extradition. Andy finds redemption. His efforts are like years of meditation that culminate in escaping the prison of the role-plying self and past identities to be one with the world at large. Ellis is long-imprisoned for a crime he committed in his youth. Periodically he comes up for parole which he’s denied. Again and again he tells the parole board that he is sorry about his criminal past, completely rehabilitated and would never do it again. Again and again, the board rejects his petition for parole. Then, finally, he tells the board that he often imagines a boy who he doesn't know. He sees the boy about to commit a horrible crime and he only wishes he could grab that boy before the crime is committed. The board then grants him parole. Essentially, Ellis is saying that he no longer is the person who committed the crime for which he went to prison; the person he is now could never have committed such a crime and he would try to stop its commission if he saw it happening. Keeping Ellis incarcerated longer would be punishing someone for a crime they didn’t commit. His redemption comes from completely disavowing his past which allows him to smuggle himself out of prison. Likewise, we are only free when we leave the karmic prison of our mind. Redemption, freedom, is ultimately the purpose of life. It comes not simply by living a good life, treating others well and satisfying our responsibilities. It comes from long and hard work to realize our personal and societal identities are temporary roles in the play of life. Then, we know the name of the play, "Terrific."...
There is one God. The God before the Big Bang. The God beyond our comprehension. The God that birthed billions of sons. God's sons too are gods. They are the stars. God's son closest to us is our sun....
When we open our eyes we see what we sense, which a fool's mind makes into nonsense. We appreciate a beautiful artwork when we see it. That makes sense. A collector paying millions for such an artwork when an indistinguishable facsimile can be had for a pittance, that's foolish nonsense. Beyond beautiful artworks, there is beauty everywhere for those who have the sense to open their eyes; but not for fools who prefer nonsense. Of course, "collectible" paintings are not purchased for the visual experience they provide but for their speculative value (that there will be a greater fool to pay more for them in the future), or as objects of prestige (identifying those who foolishly need to impress others or themselves) or as a pass to enter certain high-society social circles inhabited by other fools....
When facing the sun, shrouded in its warmth and the gazing at the beauty of everything, we're often oblivious to the shadows we cast. In the post, Being In The Present, I talked about my "insider trading" criminal case. Ultimately, as a result of losing at trial, I spent 1994 in a Federal prison in Fairton, NJ. I looked forward to going to prison. Thought I’d have a good time meeting guys outside my social/business/special interests circles. Maybe get to do things I hadn’t previously been exposed to: garden maintenance, car repair, preparing institutional foods; maybe read some books. After having snapped some lawnmower blades on rock outcroppings and making a car's problems worse, I was fired from those jobs. I didn't get a chance to work in the kitchen because I casually mentioned to an inmate that I must have gotten genital herpes years back at a group sex party; as word got around, some were concerned herpes was transmittable through food, so I was nixed from that job. Didn’t get a chance to read much beyond periodicals. Most of the time spent was pondering the nature of things and interviewing the prisoners about their circumstances and how they viewed the world. I joked around a lot, seemed to entertain the mates and the guards. Paid someone $1 to make my bed daily, someone else to make me hand-cut potato fries and broiled New Zealand calves' liver and another mate to clean the shower before I went in to jerk off. I thought I was well liked, until my last night there. Last night there, the prisoners typically threw a party for the one who was departing. As my time neared, I was getting the feeling they weren’t having a party for me. So I ordered 80 ice cream sandwiches from the commissary (from which you could privately buy foods and other stuffs) to ensure a party was to be. Everyone loved it; best party of the season. However, at some point during the party I said to a crowd of mates “you guys will probably miss me.” To which one replied: “We won’t miss you. We hate you.” Incredulous, I said, “really, why’s that?” To which he replied: “because you had too good a time here.” Now, 27 years later, I sometimes think maybe some people in my current life feel the same way about me. But, like in prison, I can’t imagine that to be so. Gazing at the sun I'm oblivious of the shadows I cast....
However dark, foreboding or uncertain the future appears, it doesn't affect us when we are in the true-present, the timeless space before now and all that follows. In late 1985 I was married with one child, unemployed, had little money saved and started a hedge fund managing the funds of a small group of investors. Soon after, in the Spring of 1986, I became embroiled in an "insider trading" scandal. The related investigation made the newspapers and shadowed me everywhere. I was at risk of losing overwhelming sums for legal fees, fines and penalties as well as the prospect of going to prison and being permanently barred from running a hedge fund which was my only viable means of earning a living. The investigation lasted for three and a half years by which time I had two more children. Then I was indicted. The trial concluded in late spring of 1990. I was found guilty. After two years spent on appealing the verdict, I was sentenced to 18 months in prison, fined $1.8M and had the prospect, pending appeals, of losing my license to continue managing money. I had also up until then paid roughly $2M for legal representation. I went to prison in January 1994. In January, 2000 I lost the appeals and was permanently barred from managing other people's money. With the attention I needed to give the investigation and trial and the dire consequences hanging over my head for eight years, investors and friends were astonished that I was able to continue running my hedge fund successfully without a care. My view was that beyond managing the hedge fund I had nothing to worry about one day to the next. The circumstances were what they were and I would deal with them as they unfolded. I wasn't dying of cancer; things could have always been worse. In fact, I was grateful for my circumstances. I was happy. Simply, I was in the present and focused on whatever next was going to be in the now....
In heaven we are all even as only souls can enter heaven and each soul is the same. We can bring our souls to heaven but we can't bring our soles to heaven. Those who know not of heaven cannot part with their soles until nightfall. Then they become lost souls. For the sun reveals the entrance to heaven and at night heaven's gates are closed....
There is only one soul. That's why it's called the sole. The soul is rarely visible, like the sole of our feet, but it's the axis connecting us to the Earth and the foundation upon which everything stands....
"Om" and "oh" are the sounds before words were born. "Om" is the incantation at the beginning and end of chapters in the Hindu scriptures, the Vedas and Upanishads. It is the sound made in ceremonies relating to the rites of passage such as weddings and during meditative and spiritual activities like yoga. It is the sound of the universe that's meant to encompass all sounds; the sound attesting to our consciousness; the sound recognizing the divine. Likewise, "oh" is a sound used to express our awakening, our immediate emotional reaction to something to which we have just been made aware. The expression "Oh my God" is the most common expression heard at the moment of orgasm. In this context, "oh my God" means one is awakened to one's oneness with God; one's oneness with the universe before the beginning of time and as nothing becomes everything: the Big Bang. As "Om" is an incantation that's chanted as "Ommmmmmmmmm," "oh my God" seems more consistent with the pace of approaching sexual climax than "Ommmmmmmmmm my God."...
Each of us has a soul. But there is only one soul. The face of the soul is the face of God. Invisible. Our mind masks the face of our soul. Our mind has an infinite number of faces. Fearing the nothingness beneath our mask, few dare remove it. But only then can we see the face of God....