Un-Fooling Ourselves

[Tony]

I believe that this world is being orchestrated by the use of social engineering.
Part of this reprograming is to misdirect consciousness.
This could come under the heading of redirecting spirituality into a pseudo-feel-good lifestyle.
I've noticed that an effective way to get through to people is to make them feel good about themselves: this feeling good is OK when everything is going well, but when it's not, people tend to fall apart.

If consciousness can be controlled, then the mind can be controlled.
This is a vital observation: we do need to be more critical.
We have two problems: one is that we are fooling ourselves, and the other is being fooled by others.

I know I sound as if I am continually hitting you over the head with this, but it is my personal view that it is of utmost importance!

Un-Fooling Ourselves

All sentient beings have consciousness
(a sentient being is a being that is not yet enlightened).
It does not matter in which dimension we reside:
we all rely on consciousness, at some level.
This consciousness is ego-centered.
Ego-centered is believing in a mental image of oneself,
which is driven by habitual patterning, called karma.
“This is me, this is how I am, this is real.”
It is a modified coating, covering our true nature.

There are beings who know how to help us maintain
this modified aspect of our precious mental self-image,
either consciously or unconsciously.
Their influences are all around us,
keeping us imprisoned and ignorant of our true nature.
They exploit our own arrogance and guilt to distract us
from resting in our true nature.

If you can get upset at being called words such as arrogant,
then you are still maintaining a mental self image.
The only way to go beyond this ordinary consciousness
is to investigate, deep deep within.
This is not as easy as you may think - it takes practice!
We all need help in this matter.

It is all too easy to fool oneself.
This is precisely what ancient teachings are all about - liberation!
These ancient teachings are fully aware of suffering and its causes.

As the levels of consciousness refine, mindfulness has to be more acute.
Mindfulness is remembering to be aware of clinging to appearances.
Those who know how to modify our attention work constantly to keep us
clinging to distractions.

Everyone around us is fooling themselves, and being fooled!
Do not be fooled into not using your mind!
If you don't use it, someone else will!

The mind has been fooled for a very long time.
Waking up is going beyond all appearances of the mind and body.

When you have gone beyond the subtlest level of consciousness,
then you may have a glimpse of wakefulness - but it will not be constant.
That takes much practice,and one must also break down one's habitual patterning (karma).

Stop re-acting!
Break out of this vicious cycle of existence!

“All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.”
We all conform at some level, even when we are not wanting to conform.
We all like to appear to know!
To get out of the Truman show...stop re-acting.

In conforming, one is following the order, the 'new word order.'
Beware that the script may be changed, but it is still the same old play...

The New Word Order....I am light. I am love, and I know.

Do not be fooled.
In truth, you are light, you are love and you do know.
But what is it that is light?
What is it that loves?
And what is that knows?

This light, love and knowing is still partial.
It is still a mental concept, a trick to distract.
Distractions are obstructions to pure being.

There is much rich manure to work with.
All we have to do is dig...deep!

Know thyself to be pure luminosity.

Meditation is merely the continuity of that realisation.
Insight is looking inward, giving rise to spontaneous presence.
This takes years of practice: time in this body is incredibly precious.

Find the simplest solution.
Simple purity within, expressing complexity in outer manifestations
to benefit others, as we are not all one - but near enough!

If you do not know the goal, how do you know where to go?
If the the goal is vague, the journey will be vague.

Consciousness can be fooled.
Essence cannot be fooled.
When we say “I know, I know”, we are fooling ourself, and returning to the feelgood factor.
This is ordinary consciousness maintaining its self-image.

Pure essence knows.
Consciousness turns this knowing into “I know”.
“I" knowing 'something” is duality.
It takes the attention away from pure perception.

You did not choose to come here.
Your karma brought you here.
That is our driving force: karmically collected ignorance,
which we maintain through the ego clinging to our ideas and emotions.

If you meet with any precious teachings on liberation,
your good karma has brought you there, to continue your practice.

First realise your true nature, and then work for the benefit of others.
That is unconditional love.
That unconditional love goes beyond good and evil.
It is the yoga of one taste.
Working for the benefit of others, goes beyond your own benefit and aggrandisement.
This altruistic motivation is an antidote to self-cherishing ego-clinging.
It is a safeguard.
Compassion takes the attention off oneself and on to another.

The New Word Order will tell you that all there is, is love.
However, there is my love, and there is love.
There is my knowing, and there is knowing.
If it is to make me feel good, then I will feel better than others.
That is called pride!

The negative emotions are of value, if they can be caught at a very subtle level.
They are, in fact, pure wisdoms that have been distorted.

Repeating information from books is nothing like the real thing.
That's what philosophers do.
Even after being shown the true nature of one's mind, if one does not
practise to attain stability, it will remain just a mental image.

Why are we here?
We have a choice.
We can practise un-fooling ourselves,
or we can go on fooling ourselves.

If we take the easy option and merely think that we already know everything
and therefore need do nothing,
then we will not find the worm of nourishment buried below the surface!

It is beneficial to have the altruistic wish to realise unconditional love, which is the way of the bodhisattva – but this is only truly realised at the end of one's training. Before that, it is merely a concept – a worthwhile one, but still a concept.

Bodhisattva prayer:
"To establish every sentient being
In numbers vast as space, in the state of enlightenment,
May I realise self-knowing awareness
Through the instruction of the precious teachings.

May whatever merit I have accumulated
Be for the benefit of all sentient beings
That they may attain enlightenment.

May all sentient beings find happiness,
And the causes of happiness.
May they be free from suffering,
And the causes of suffering.
May they be free from attachment to those far and near,
And remain in great equanimity"

Tony

[aranuk]

Hi Tony are you back home from your SA tour yet? Can you please elaborate on what you said about karma...".You did not choose to come here.
Your karma brought you here."

Stan

[Mark]

Beautifully stated as always Pie, thank you for the timely and salient reminder. Recognizing the difference between an intellectual knowing and an innate, conscious knowing is sometimes difficult. It involves the process of thinking, rather than doing. Knowing the concept and invoking it often takes the place of really doing too many times.. The simplicity of your remonstrations alongside the purity of the truth evoked is humbling.

[vibrations]

Beautifully exposed. I was just enjoying. Thank you for so bright ideas.

[crested-duck]

Tony I'm looking forward to reading your reply to Stan's question so I may better understand also!

[modwiz]

Posted by crested-duck (here)
Tony I'm looking forward to reading your reply to Stan's question so I may better understand also!

For those who are unaware of this dynamic in our incarnational cycling, the answer from Tony should prove empowering. He is very good at these things.

[mosquito]

Timely words brother Pie !!

[Davidallany]

Tony, I fear that your words will remain mere concepts to the uninitiated. It's like you said, karma. Without the presence of a teacher, knowledge will be misused to further add power and delusion to the ego. The precious dharma must be seeked, not offered. Or the value Is at risk of degredation in the wrong hands.

[noprophet]

Excellent post Tony.

Dion Fortune used to say she did not believe there was a such thing as an incarnate master.

For incarnating removed you from mastery of awareness.

[Ernie Nemeth]

Hi Tony, great teachings, as usual.

Lots to contemplate.
Thanks

[Ineffable Hitchhiker]

Posted by Davidallany (here)
Tony, I fear that your words will remain mere concepts to the uninitiated. It's like you said, karma. Without the presence of a teacher, knowledge will be misused to further add power and delusion to the ego. The precious dharma must be seeked, not offered. Or the value Is at risk of degredation in the wrong hands.

“A leader is best
When people barely know he exists.
Of a good leader, who talks little,
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
They will say, “We did this ourselves.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching




Thank you for popping in Tony.
What a great reminder.

You did not choose to come here.
Your karma brought you here.
That is our driving force: karmically collected ignorance,
which we maintain through the ego clinging to our ideas and emotions.

If you meet with any precious teachings on liberation,
your good karma has brought you there, to continue your practice.

First realise your true nature, and then work for the benefit of others.
That is unconditional love.
That unconditional love goes beyond good and evil.
It is the yoga of one taste.
Working for the benefit of others, goes beyond your own benefit and aggrandisement.
This altruistic motivation is an antidote to self-cherishing ego-clinging.
It is a safeguard.
Compassion takes the attention off oneself and on to another.

"That is our driving force: karmically collected ignorance,
which we maintain through the ego clinging to our ideas and emotions."

Yes!

We all have ego fixations. We carry them around with us every day. Guilty as charged. It´s a "heavy load". Working on it.
Hanging onto fixed ideas of who I am am, is the "baggage" that makes moving forward difficult.
The way that I have understood "Un-fooling Ourselves" is :-
A mind that isn´t aware, reacts.
A mind that is relatively aware, will recognise the game that is being played.
A mind that rests in absolute awareness has no need in playing any games.

[Davidallany]

A leader is best When people barely know he exists.
Of a good leader, who talks little,
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
They will say, “We did this ourselves.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Thank you.


"Sound old rulers, it is said,
Left people to themselves, instead
Of wanting to teach everything
And start the people arguing.
With mere instruction in command,
So that people understand
Less than they know, woe is the land;
But happy the land that is ordered so
That they understand more than they know.
For everyone's good this double key
Locks and unlocks equally.
If modern man would use it, he
Could find old wisdom in his heart
And clear his vision enough to see
From start to finish and finish to start
The circle rounding perfectly"
Lao Tzu

[norman]

I read the OP and wanted to challenge one aspect of it. It leaped out at me as being completely different to everything else stated.

I scrolled down and there were several others interested in the very same aspect.

There are "givens" in every belief system I've encountered. Some of my favourites are very primitive and very laughable. I may even conclude sometime that the laughter is better than the mystic. I may even find sometime that there are levels where our most mystic "givens" are very laughable too.

I named my own daughter "Karma". I don't even know why. How mystic is that?

[Cjay]

Sometimes I think too much. Sometimes I don't think enough.
Sometimes I choose to simply be in the moment.

Sometimes I tell myself it's all ok, even though I know it's not all ok.
Then I ask myself, "what can I learn from this?"
Then I ask the universe, "are you trying to teach me something?"

Then I go and do something stupid or clever or do nothing at all.

[Carmody]

More than anything, I think it comes down to the near impossibility of bringing a sensibility or semblance of life as a plasma based dimensional being of great interconnectivity and flow, into a different dimensional space as a '3d time based world/universe'..and trying to bring that 'other reality' into this place..with as little convoluted change as is possible.

And how near impossible this task is, regarding find a way to get the interconnectivity of the given individuals to be high enough to be separate individuals..but still connected.

To have aspects of a hive like connection but to retain full individuality. The public or external schism seems to be occurring between those two extremes.

This 3d universe, this place of time based lattice structure matter and 'reality' is not favorable to that sort of 'edifice of self awareness' which is the normal state of affairs... in such another dimension, which is where our larger self hails from.

I think that it is important to understand some of this -as aspects go- when contemplating the '3d time/matter based world' reasons for such a need for the proper 'centering of the self', which Tony is trying to get across, here.

We're all like a fish out of water here, trying to find our way. in an established functional system of intelligent being generation and regeneration, this sort of thing would not be evident.

We'd be beyond such things.

And we know, via our dimensional awareness of other spaces and other realities that indeed, we are. On that level, we are far more evolved, in some fundamental ways. Our realization of connection to the universe and all -is more evolved. But... our external 3d body connections are quite silent, in our 3d estimations and base awareness. Schism.

We suffer greatly in this schism of this 3d reality, where we are left to figure out things blindly, in a situation where most of our capacity ---is left behind.

However, there is a door to that understanding and that capacity, and it is inside of us. It is not external.

The reason it is internal... is that the very reason for this place to exist and this duality being (that we each are) to be in it, originates in the internal, not the external.

The schism is that the body, the envoy of the 'waking' awareness in this space -is designed to externalize, whereas the being inside.. is designed to internalize and correct before reaching outward. So the problem erupts when the externalization becomes the reflection of the internalization. And Vice Versa. (you try to fix external -to you- issues via external application. whereas the being inside tries to fix internal issues by internalizing. The two constantly make errors in judgment and application - based on each other's confusion in data and connectivity)

Realize the disconnect ...and then the ego may be stilled so the body does not run around in repetitive incorrect circles. (the ego is partially a reflection of the originator, the internal..and the 'duality-design' originates from the internal so..there is a need to go to the headwaters of the internal.... to fix the external error)

In this stilling of the external body-self... the owner of the edifice or body, the internal being... can finally correct the errors of contemplation ---and execution of actions.

Not perfectly stated, but hopefully you get the idea. Basically, you are thrown into these waters..but you have to teach yourself how to swim.

[Tony]

Posted by aranuk (here)
Hi Tony are you back home from your SA tour yet? Can you please elaborate on what you said about karma...".You did not choose to come here.
Your karma brought you here."

Stan

Hello Stan

The only people that I know of who can make a conscious decision to come back here are certain lamas called tulkus (although there could be others) - they leave a letter before they die, indicating where and when they will be reborn, and when they are "found", they undergo rigorous tests. They are designated a number – The Dalai Lama is the 14th – and in the Bon tradition, I believe there is someone who is the 30th! I have heard some tulkus say that they do not remember their previous incarnations, but they are 'in tune with' what their previous incarnation was engaged in.

I am totally ignorant of my past lives (I can't even remember what colour socks I wore yesterday!) - personally, I don't find it relevant because one can notice within oneself certain traits and abilities which seem to be second nature. Many accomplished practitioners (however, not yet realised) make prayers to be born in other realms to continue their practice.

There are nine levels of bodhisattvas, the tenth level being enlightenment, so you can see that there is much to go through! In my own ignorance, I am just off street level (I hope...!).

And yes, we are still in Ecuador – back in the UK in a week.

All the best
Tony

[Jay]

Posted by pie'n'eal (here)
Part of this reprogramming is to misdirect consciousness. This could come under the heading of redirecting spirituality into a pseudo-feel-good lifestyle.
..Tony

I suspect that the "Positive Thinking" movement in spite of the philosophy's merits.. as well as the "Prosperity Doctrine" of so-called newborn Christians are part of the same goal - i.e. to misdirect consciousness.

[Aetheric Traveler]

Is there a difference between incarnating and embodiment?

I have never read Dion Fortune. I can't comment on her specifically.

I have, however, read some of the "I AM" Discourses by Saint Germaine, the Sai Baba material. Me personally, I then re-interpreted the parts of the New Testament that show to me there is a definite Mind-Consciousness war against humanity being perpetrated by those locked into lower levels of consciousness who want to enslave others there as well. Joshua ben Joseph, who became known as Jesus the Christ was a person of human origin who became an Adept, then, a Master, then an Ascended Master capable of coming and going in and out of physical form at will.

As I understand the Adept/Master/Ascended Master/Avatar concepts (what little a very inexperienced person such as myself can understand), it appears to me that there exists the ability in all physical-corporeal beings to transcend material embodiment once certain levels of mastery are attained. It seems that this is what Jesus tried to teach, but you will only find fragments of this knowledge left in the Bible.

To say that there are no Masters incarnate or incarnate masters suggests to me a very limited understanding of the real basis of human incarnate existence which (IMO) is to emody corporeally to experience the hidden parts of our souls that will lower our vibrations and hinder our ability to move in and out of any consciousness we desire, physical or otherwise. The level of compassion achieved by an Ascended Master as I have understood it, is such that it is associated with a great desire to help others, and that means lowering one's elevated cosmic vibratory state down to a level of physical embodiment to be "Present" for those locked in the physical forms for the benefit of assisting them in their "liberation and self-realization" that they are light, they are capable of becoming Ascended Masters, and that they are only limited to this "crude matter (Yoda's words)" by their lack of understanding and practice of "Being In-Light-and-Meant" or as some of my friends say Being At-One-ment.

I guess would put a caveat on Dion Fortune's statement such that there are no Ascended Masters who are locked into physical incarnate forms, dispossesed of the ability to de-atomize their corporeal form bodies at will and return to the Essence of Essence Existence from which they find so much more pleasant. It has been suggested in the readings I've enjoyed that when they "materialize", that it's not an incarnation, but a lowering of their vibration down to our level just to be able to communicate and assist us. This lowering is distasteful to them, but out of sacrifice, love and compassion, coupled with the desire to help others, they tolerate this distasteful "materialized state" only long enough to accomplish their task, and then return to their higher vibration, which to our eyes, looks like a de-materialization.

In closing, I enjoyed Tony's comments and would say that the explanation/comparison/opining I have shared above hopefully describes the state of being that one can enjoy when the things Tony stated are practiced and achieved on a regular basis. It's no wonder then that the authorities killed Jesus and his followers when they learned how to begin doing the things he did. They wouldn't need to use money, doctors, food production and consumption, and no one could govern or lord power over them. Any of them who became Ascended Masters would certainly not be "killable". The modern version is happening today with Billions of People, mass communication, worldwide potential for awareness changes and the greatest potential of a spiritual/cosmic "Critical Mass" jumping point in the written history of the world (or at least what we know of it). No wonder the New World Order folks are pulling out all the big guns.

Love and Light,
AT

[Aetheric Traveler]

"I am Spartacus and I brought you here".

Karma is the place we left before getting here.

So don't order the lamb if you see it on the menu. It could be your mother.

Wink, Wink ;>) ;>)

[Jenci]

You perceive yourself to be your thoughts, your feelings, your ideas, your beliefs, your rights, your wrongs, your hurts, your joys, your pain, your fears, your successes, your failures.....

But you are fooling yourself - these are just merely clouds. Coming and going. Impermanent.

You are the sky. Unchanging and infinite in which all the clouds are perceived, yet unaffected by all.

Thoughts and feelings come and go.
Yet I remain.
Know this I.

Jeanette

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=xmEhX5Ourzw