Saunsea

An explorer with the heart of a humanitarian.

[saunsea]

Who wants to play hop scotch into the ocean?

[saunsea]

Sacramento River

[saunsea]

How do you know who you are?

Do you see who I really am?

How do you see who another person truly is at the deepest depths of their nature?

Are you using your ears; your eyesight; your thoughts to form an opinion; a judgment; a perception of who I am?

Am I merely a perception?

Are the words which I use for the purpose of communication creating an image within your mind of who I am?

Do your memories and experience of interaction with me shape a definition of how you view me? Is that who I am?

Am I merely a perception?

Would it be accurate to say, that nearly each one of us forms a point of view, idea, and conception of who another person is, by using our abilities of thought? Does our ability to think, create an accurate perception and awareness of the real identity of a human being we see as an “other”?

Who are you beyond who you think you are?

That is a question I have been contemplating for quite some time. I use the term “contemplating” because this word, to me means something a bit different – a bit deeper – than simply thinking about something.

Contemplation means to see through thoughts themselves into a reality which lies beyond the thoughts themselves. It is as though thoughts may at times act as a fog in the mind and contemplation is a Way in which we see through the fog and discover a place of clarity.

We see that which is unseen.

Contemplation is coming to a vision of nothing. Not nothing in the sense of being void or empty, but nothing in the sense that in silence and in rest we find peace.

What does sound look like from the point of view of silence?

What does your body look like from the point of view of all the space which surrounds your body?

Perhaps the silence would wish to investigate and inquire as to the nature of these sounds emanating from itself. Perhaps surrounding space which to our eyes appears blank (although when we look with tools that can detect other frequency of light, we see space is not empty at all) would investigate the things we call objects and matter, in the same way that we human beings talk of exploring space.

The question and investigation of “who am I?” is vital to living a healthy and sane-life in relationship to the world around us. When we feel separate from others, separate from nature itself, this creates a feeling a strangeness and distrust toward life. Invariably we will see life as something to be conquered or as a problem to be solved. And so we’re constantly and perhaps unknowingly looking for problems we might solve through our own efforts and work.

We look at the problem of poverty and think something must be done to change this state of circumstance in our world. Perhaps we ourselves feel impoverished. Even the richest person may be driven in life by a belief in the fear of poverty. Maybe some become rich in order to use their wealth to help the poor. But of course, we do not have the poor without the rich, so these efforts to obtain wealth to help others is limited by the fact that perceived wealth exists only in relationship with perceived poverty.

In reality, there is no poverty and there is no wealthy. The earth produces enough resources for all people to live well, but because we see ourselves (who am I?) as separate from one another there are some who hoard wealth while others suffer greatly. When we see our unconditional relationship to all people and all of life, poverty and wealth evaporate and the grand resources of earth are shared so that no person is in lack. I am not talking about politics or forms of law and economics to enforce the sharing of resources. I am saying that sharing and generosity naturally arise within the freedom of truly understanding our relationship and connection to life.

When a person asks the question “who are you?” I wonder who is asking this question. I wonder who is responding. I wonder what the questioner really wants to know, deep down about who I am.

We all identify ourselves with this letter-word “I.” It is perhaps the most used letter-word by those who use the English language. But what does “I” mean? What is it referring to? Everyone is “I” in the simple example that this how we each refer to ourselves. Perhaps we think that when we use the letter-word “I” we are referring to something inside of the skin or in the brain. Perhaps we are referring to some sort of spirit that is trapped within our body to finally find escape and liberation upon our death.

Who are you beyond who you think you are?

[saunsea]

Live Like the Wind

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. – Jesus, John 3:8

What does it mean to live as the wind blows? Does the wind itself control where it goes? Where did you come from? Where are you going?

Do you walk through this life as though you are the wind, free and present? Do you live as though your past creates your present, or as your present creates your past? “The wind blows wherever it pleases…” not because it intends to arrive at a particular place, nor because of where it has been. The wind moves for the same reason that people dance or compose music.

If the goal of playing music were to reach the end of the song, those who play the fastest would be considered the greatest musicians. But the purpose of music is to enjoy the journey, each fluctuating pulsating tone of sound. In our society, especially within religious circles,

We in the West live within a culture of insecurity and people searching for meaning in their lives of commercialism and advertising.   We are constantly bombarded with the phrase “God has a purpose for you.” But the word purpose can be looked upon from different perspectives.

There is the perspective of purpose all-too-common in western culture, which is a so-called “mission statement” or, pre-defined purpose we accept for our lives. A purpose of something we are supposed to do in order to bring fulfillment into our hearts. But perhaps in that sense – the one we are most often sold – can be very dangerous. It can create a mentality that we must take matters into our own hands to in a way impose our will upon nature.

There is another sense of purpose or, purposeless, in which we find our life’s meaning not in an intellectual concept or definition, but in the simplicity of how nature functions. When we look at our lungs breathing in and out, not because we will them to, but because it is simply their nature to do so. That is the sense of purpose I am speaking of here. A sense of purpose which does not make us feel that we have control over what is happening; rather, that we can get in line with what is happening here and now. We can recognize our life as being in unison with the lungs breathing, the heart beating, and vast ocean that is all of life and existence.

Live as the wind blows.

[saunsea]

The Limiting Aspects of Belief

Beliefs often act as walls which ultimately result in our disconnected feeling of the time we spend alive. We formulate a belief – a resounding absolution of acceptance – based on perhaps what we’ve been taught as a youth we ought to believe, perhaps because we want security in something, or perhaps because we wanted to be accepted by others and so we adopted their beliefs whether knowingly or because that was the environment of thought we surrounded ourselves with.

“Beliefs cling, but faith lets go…” – Alan Watts

If you’ve ever engaged in conversation with a person who stands on their beliefs concretely – whatever they may be – you’ve likely experienced the frustration of actually having a discussion with them. Take a person who believes the Bible to be the literal “Word of God” for example. For every topic of conversation they have a verse ready to tell you the un-discussable truth. Thus, it becomes impossible to really have a discussion of concepts and ideas.

The science of the past 200 years, with its many accomplishments, has also done a great disservice to the way we see. Science has produced a general outlook that what is reality is what is seen or can be observed in the physical sense. I would like to say early on, that my philosophical viewpoint does not necessarily differentiate the spiritual and the physical, as though they are two aspects to be believed or not; rather, my philosophy is that the two go together. There is no separation (although there is perhaps a perceived separation), between the somethingness (physical) and the spacial nothingness (spiritual). Because without one you cannot have the other. And so we see that they go together.

We often form our thoughts about reality from the point of view of what our physical eyes see. However, we must recognize that this leads us to forming a highly limited and small-minded perception of what is truly here and there. The eyes take in an immense amount of light in every moment, but our attention excludes nearly all of it so that we can focus on something particular. Therefore, since we know we are excluding so much of what is really happening, we can also be assured that our perception of reality, based in thought, is incredibly reduced.

So how do we see, really see?

We see by detaching ourselves from the belief that what is reality is merely what we see with our physical eyes. Which means, in one sense, we must let go of our attachment to thoughts. Which is not to say that thoughts are useless or that we should try not to think, simply that we see for ourselves what thoughts truly are.

Thoughts are exceptional in how they allows us to function with one another, but thoughts are not who we really are deep down, they are but a tool for us to use for the advancement of societal ideas and communication. As one would use a hammer to drive in a nail, so we use thoughts for a proper purpose.

When our attachment to thoughts is gone – attachment in the sense that who we think we are is who we are – we are liberated to truly see.

[saunsea]

What’s the problem?

Many problems in this life derive from worry about the future and regret from the past. But truth and reality is here now.

The only way for us to recognize true life, true reality, and our true identity, is to recognize and directly engage with the present moment. When the mind wanders into the unknown territory of the future, we have a tendency to begin to desire control over our future, and this creates a problem. Once we believe we can control the future, we limit our life’s possibilities and rob ourselves of the joy that comes with not knowing the surprises that life will bring.

But what is far more robbing to our life, in living mentally somewhere other than the present, is that we live mentally in a place that is not reality, which is the definition of insanity. We do this because we have bought a lie that if we do not have a specific plan of what we will do and what we will accomplish that we will wind-up homeless, hungry, or worst of all – a failure at life.

As Jesus taught:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

I believe that Jesus, in the previous two paragraphs, teaches a truth is quite uncommon and foreign to western society. It is extremely rare that I have heard a preacher speak on this teaching with any true conviction (or from a place of personal practice). But I do often hear sermons in church about personal finance planning. In sermons which speak to the latter (personal finance planning), they even use verses to claim their personal finance advice is biblical and “God’s wisdom on managing your money.” Their first point is generally the tithe, ensuring that your 10% gets to pockets of the good clergymen. But I have never heard the above quoted verses referenced in a sermon about managing money, even though it seems to me that is exactly what Jesus was teaching about.

The Dalai Lama is quoted as saying, when asked what surpises him the most:

“Man; because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then he dies having never really lived.”

Now, I believe that it is good to have goals; however, I use the word “goals” in the sense of that which is in your heart of what is truly your passion to do. A goal is not something to say “I will be this and do this at this exact date and time,” but a goal is something which you know to be an aspect of your heart. When we connect with what is in our heart, and see our true goals, they naturally flow out of us as live in consciousness of who we are. For example, let us say that a goal is love God with all of our heart, soul, and strength. If we were to set this as a goal, without realizing that it is who we are, we will always fail to reach that goal. We cannot love from a place of duty or obligation, as that is not true love. In order for love to be genuine and true, it must be given from a place of total free-will.

What are you doing right now, in this moment (obviously you’re reading this text)? Remember, as you go about your days to fully engage directly with what you are doing in each moment. In this way, you will see a difference in the quality and enjoyment you gain from what you are doing.

Who are you in your heart? I believe that every human being has the truth of reality within their heart, the place where peace, love, and happiness exists. However, we must see past the symbols and conceptions that our mind has been filled with by the external world to see what we possess within the internal world.