0) The One Principle That Orients All Others

What do I want?

1) The Most Truthful Response

Paradise.

Really what I want is Paradise. I want someone to tell me it exists and they know the way.

2) How Do I Get It?

First off, I accept Paradise is not a place. No one will take me there.

It might be a state of mind.

So, I need to understand my mind.

But if Paradise is a projection of the mind, then so is Damnation 

and so are other archetypal thought patterns like heroes and villains and chaos and order. Because the mind creates contrast by duality. 

I need to go beyond all that. Integrate it all--meaning, see the ground they all share.

And to do that, I need to know how to use the mind as a tool.

Any tool must first be seen for what it is (otherwise the tool uses the user).

The purpose of the mind should be to wake up from patterns and stories. 

So, to wield the mind as a tool properly the first right thought is to know who is thinking.

I is an aggregate

of

living information flows, patterns and stories,

perceived and inferred,

which are experienced as Being.

The thinker is not me. There is no me. 

And there is no I or me to assert this is a kind of dream, or any of the claims on this page for that matter.

There is only patterning that wraps itself in a name.

The thinker is an animal that wants comfort. And is very good at rationalizing to get it.

Awareness, on the other hand, is looking for experiences.

It finds the experiences it seeks out. Awareness is drawn out toward what it wants.

Any time awareness is pulled out and away and centers in the "I," there is separateness, ego, and suffering from delusion. When there is the cessation of attention rushing out toward any one thing, there is presence, focus, contentment, and joy.

The ego only exists because the body exists; the boundaries of the body create perspective concerned with preserving the body and the body's orientation or presentation in space.

As long as there is a body that can be hurt or pleased, attention splits into "here inside of me" and "there, outside, other."

Subject-Object Orientation is the cause of all suffering.

Not because Buddha said it. Because that's what the mind, when wielded as a tool, discovers.

4) Obstacles of Note

I notice there is a desire within to to have reverence for some thing. My mind wants to project reverence outward onto something tangible.

I also notice the sister of that tendency is that I love the feeling of knowing I have the right idea or approach to a situation, market, or circumstance.

5) Essences

Art, sports, time with friends and family, studying for its own sake, walking in nature, cooking, and gardening--these are great ways to live life. 

When subject-object orientation softens, these activities naturally reveal themselves as self-evidently worthwhile, needing no further justification.

The most important things in life do not have a "because."

6) Albedo

The original longing was never for a gilded afterlife or a perfect world “somewhere else.”

Love is a sought-after ideal for the projection of a Paradise because it is what draws awareness into union and integration with all that is.

There is pure love and there is deluded love.

Deluded love says I love, and I love what I am seeing because of how it makes me feel. It is the last fortress of the subject-object split: I (the lover) remain over here, you (the beloved) remain over there, and the current that seems to join us is secretly used to reinforce the banks of me and not-me. 

Pure love says here is love, and in it there is no discontinuity.

When there is no longer a center flowing toward a periphery, but life is known as the undivided medium itself, then the ground will have been discovered.