Sunday, August 6, 2023

Living with Open Hands 2.0 (Table of Contents)

 Living with Open Hands 2.0

Preface: Preparation for Going Beyond the Pale

(A Framework for Inquiry and Reflection)


Living with Open Hands 1.0 

Living with Open Hands is an outward expression of the inner work of opening the Mind, Heart, and Will. This opening up requires open eyes and open ears that see and hear with the heart . . . a "Seeing" that goes beneath the surface . . . to the heart, the center, the silence. 


Living with Open Hands 1.0 was my first 12 years of blogging. I had so many questions and so much dissonance that I had to write in order to better formulate all of my questions. I also found a way or a framework emerging for me to use alongside my religious / spiritual journey to make sure that I was maintaining my humanity along with my spiritual practice. But as I continued, the story began to change significantly. I realized that the more human I became, the less religious I could be in good conscience. And then I found the dissonance getting even greater, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. It wasn't until I let go of all dogma and doctrine that I could sense some resonance and harmony.


Nothing is "fixed" or absolute. There is no certainty. There is no solid ground. Why??? Because everything is changing constantly. This is not what I was taught all my life, for 50 years. I didn't like it. But I finally was able to accept this truth. So 5 years ago, I started to write Living with Open Hands 2.0. I had stopped writing because I was so astounded at what I was discovering. I had to decide whether to be fully human, authentic and honest,  or be labeled, categorized, and boxed by some high- minded people stuffed up with dogma. The decision presented itself plainly. I no longer wanted to be a second hand person. So then, I knew I needed to begin to write again, if I were to maintain my own sanity and keep seeking to understand; following the truth wherever it may lead.

This https://livingwithopenhands1.blogspot.com/ led to this https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/ 


I Don’t Write because I Know.

I Write because I Don’t Know.

I Don’t Write because I Understand.

I Write as a Way of Seeking Understanding.

For me, Writing Has Become a Disruptive,

Transformational Process of Inquiry.


The reality of being human
“If you wish to become a philosopher, the first thing to realise is that most people go through life with a whole world of beliefs that have no sort of rational justification, and that one man’s world of beliefs is apt to be incompatible with another man’s, so that they cannot both be right. People’s opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people is a secondary consideration.”
Bertrand Russell, The Art of Philosophizing and other Essays (1942)

"We become especially hostile when trying to defend opinions we know, deep down, are false. Rather than trying on a different pair of goggles, we become mental contortionists, twisting and turning until we find an angle of vision that keeps our current views intact." [Adam Grant]



Living with Open Hands 2.0 

Table of Contents

Why I Write (2.0)

The Dissonance of Structural Incoherence

Too Big To Fail

Introduction

My Philosophical Evolution

Living with Open Hands 2.0      

          -- a continuing evolvement 

Seeing the World through the Eyes of the Brokenhearted and 

       Seeing the World through our own Eyes of Brokenheartedness

Learning to See


Part 1: The House Built on Sand Will Not Withstand the Storms of Life

Chapter 1: My Demise

My Foundations Began to Crumble

Disruption of Destructive Strongholds


“The blizzard, the blizzard of the world

Has crossed the threshold

And it's overturned

The order of the soul.” 

(Leonard Cohen)


The Power of Stories

The Macro-Narratives and the Micro-Narratives that Shape Our World

The Fictions that Thought Creates

A Downward Journey

Die Before You Die

Downloaded Thinking / Cultural Conditioning

The Violence of the Machine

The Virus of the Mind; a mental health pandemic

Labeling, Categorizing, Dehumanizing ,and Eliminating

The Trouble with Normal

Silence at the Center

WOKE!

Into the Abyss

Fragmentation or Wholeness

Chapter 2: My Deconstruction

Breaking It Wide Open -- Seeing the Total Incoherence

Demolition of Underlying Strongholds and Constructs

13 Reasons Why - The Deconstruction of my Deconversion

Second Hand Person

A Circular Paradox?

How Do We Know That We Know What We Know???

Did you know? WE ARE ALL WRONG...

Knowing and Unknowing, Truth and Untruth

Permanency

Making the Unconscious Conscious

A Shift of Authority

What is This Drive to Convince? … to Be Right???

Opinionation

Comfort, Security, Certainty

Grasping, Gripping, Groping, Griping

This Unknowing

Perspectives on Seeing

Through Alien Eyes

Contentment or Satisfaction

The Tyranny of Thought

Politics of Violence

Mediated versus Unmediated Living

Chapter 3: My Deconversion

The Absolute Necessity of the Demolition of All Human Constructs

Dogma, Creeds, Doctrine, Theologies, Underlying Assumptions

> Doctrinal Dissonance and Biblical Contradictions

The Image of God

That Which is Greater Than Me

Behold Thy God

Righteous Savior Syndrome

The Underpinnings of Faith

An Old, Old Story

          based on crumbling foundations

Heaven and Hell

          and other such stories

How Holy is the Holy Book?

10 Commandments -- the best morality of all time?

Hoodwinked & Hijacked

Immigration, Homosexuality, and Abortion -- a biblical and historical perspective

Bedrock of Being

Philosophical Suicide

Dogma

> Christians Bearing False Witness Against Christianity

Caring Too Much

All Lives Matter?

Understanding

Compassion First

Violence at the Core

Words Matter

The Trauma of Toxicity

Democracy or Hypocrisy

Informed Choice: the missing link

If Only . . .

Being a Victim of Change

Triggering Fear

Voices of the People

What Works?

These Stories

WWJD

Cairn of Remembrance

On Prayer

Magical Thinking

Truth or Lies ... YOU choose

Part 2: The House Built on a Solid Foundation Will Withstand the Storms of Life

Chapter 4: My Reconstruction

Rebuilding a Solid Foundation -- From Incoherence to Wholeness

> Internal Reconstruction (perspective, attitude, values, understanding)

How We Think and See…

with an open mind, open heart, and open will.

The Inward Journey

Static or Dynamic; Stuck or Unfolding?

Being Open to Me

Unclenching the Fists

The Cocoon

Hope and Freedom

Blind Spot

Truth, Wisdom, Meaning

My Sacred Path of the Amoeba

Significance and Relevance

Thoughts on Thought

The Sacred and the Profane

I - Thou (versus) I - It


> External Reconstruction (words, relationships, community, politics)
How We Act, React, and Interact...

with an open mind, open heart, and open will

Being Political

Democracy or Hypocrisy?

Politics of Violence

Truth or Lies - You choose

Voices of the People

Virus of the Mind; a mental health pandemic

Labeling, Categorizing, Dehumanizing ,and Eliminating

Feed the Hungry? Really???

Socialism -- Evil and Godless?

Liberal??? What does that even mean???

Progressive & Open versus Regressive & Closed

Mad World - Are We Listening?

Alternative Reality

A Christian Nation???

The Essence of Democracy... The Essence of Reality

Chapter 5: My Worldview -- a new story emerging

How Then Shall I Live?

The Strength of Vulnerability; The Power of Gentleness

Being Human Together

The Necessity of Diversity

Ubuntu

Great Conversation

A Page of Lost Questions

Incidental Graces

The Great Circle of Life and Death


A Tentative Conclusion


Even though this blog reflects a total deconstruction and deconversion, an uprooting and destruction of my beliefs and dogma that I followed all my life, I realized that my very basic guidelines for living, individually and collectively, have not changed at all. There are still the same. And I am still me. See:


Bibliography



Wednesday, June 28, 2023

The great circle of life and death

Press, oh press in the day of destruction
The listening ear to the earth,
And you will hear, through your sleep
You will hear,
How in death
Life begins.
(Nelly Sachs)

Life arises spontaneously from itself.
There is nothing that is done.
There is nothing we can do, 
except watch in wonder.

We are constantly trying to force and control things, 
trying to fit them into our own mental constructs and expectations of what we think should be in order to appease our comfort, security, and certainty;
trying to fit in and conform to this world 
with all of its expectations and demands.
This is the essence of all cultures, religions, and belief systems.

But a paradigm shift for me was when I started to look at life through the eyes of life itself. 

How does nature work? It doesn't. No effort. No force. It just is and sustains; innately, naturally. 

The sun comes up and the sun goes down.
After day, it is night. After night it is day.
There is no ending. The night becomes the beginning of another day.
Everything first "is"; while everything is becoming whatever is next.
Trees shed their leaves, rest dormantly as they naturally prepare for new leaves in the spring.

There is no ending. AND there is no knowing. There is just being and becoming. 
There is nothing we must do to make this work
except to let go and let come. 
We do not have to explain anything to the trees or the bees.
They just know that after that which seemed complete wasn’t,
because that which is new is already becoming.
There is no destination, only process. There is nothing more to achieve or accomplish. 
There is only life and death. There is only beginning and becoming without ending. 
Nothing is final, nothing is complete. It is all life, the force that does not force, the process.
Continuing to create and sustain everything.
There is no destination because it is all process. It all continues to unfold. 
In death it enfolds, waiting until that which is next; 
ready to unfold as unfoldment gives new life; 
already becoming, unfolding like a flower blooms.
Every ending is a new beginning.

And yet, we insecure humans want answers. 
We cannot trust the process; 
what was, is what was; what is, is what is; 
and what will be, we'll see. That's it. 
When will we learn that all we have is "what is"; here and now?

Death is merely a transition.
Universes are born and die.
Stars are formed from dust
blazing brightly providing light and life 
to all living beings.

This is the beautiful dance of creation
of birth, expansion, decay, and death.
And it happens all by itself
with absolute effortlessness. 

Life simply lives itself

The following is from the article at this link. It has deeply touched me: https://www.unbrokenself.com/7-life-changing-things-i-learned-from-the-tao-te-ching/ 

Humans are the only species that think that we have to do life.

1. “The Tao does nothing, but nothing is left undone
This is perhaps my favorite quote from the Tao Te Ching. That simple little sentence hit me like a freight train, and changed my view of life forever.

But what does it actually mean?

Lao Tzu uses the word ‘Tao’ to refer to the totality of all things. It’s both the creative life force from which the universe arises and the essence of all that exists in it. You might think of it as both the cause and the effect — the intelligence behind life and the very substance of life.

And you know what?

It’s all doing itself!

Life is running this grand show all by itself.

Universes are born and die. Stars are formed from dust, blazing brightly, providing light and life to all living beings, all of whom flicker on and off throughout eternity like fireflies. The dance of creation — of birth, expansion, decay, and death — happens quite by itself, like a vast cosmic program playing itself out across eternity — and it all happens with absolute effortlessness!

Life simply lives itself. 
There’s no notion of ‘doership’ involved. 
The Earth doesn’t have to get stressed about the momentous task of revolving around the sun. A person certainly would. So much pressure! But it just happens. Similarly, rivers don’t stop to ponder their long journey back to the sea and fret about whether they’ll ever actually make it. Again, it just happens.

All things, when unobstructed, simply follow their own nature; each a thread in the immense tapestry of existence.

The only species with ideas to the contrary 
are human beings.

We think we somehow have to do life. We have this terrible burden of trying to make life work and getting things to match up to how we think they should be. My spiritual teacher, James Swartz, once said, “It’s not the doing that’s so exhausting, it’s the notion of doership”. It’s the idea that I’m somehow responsible for making all this work.

I’m not. You’re not, either. The human mind, in all its wondrous yet buggy glory, simply thinks it is.

For me, the number one lesson of the Tao Te Ching is to let go of this compulsion to continually try to control and manipulate reality.

Life will carry us if we let it. There’s a deeper intelligence inherent in everything; an innate balance and flow that, contrary to what we might think, is part of a vast, underlying perfection.

Life has been at this for a very long time. It knows what it’s doing. We human beings show up at the last minute and somehow think we’re responsible for running the entire show. It’s quite funny actually.

This doesn’t mean we should never take action because our action is part of the universe in motion. As it says in the Bhagavad Gita, “the wise see action in inaction and inaction in action”. But we’re personally not responsible for making the world turn or keeping the cosmos in motion. You can guarantee it’ll be here for eons after all trace of the human race has vanished.

So why don’t we just relax, get with the flow and enjoy the show?

2. Think you can improve the universe? I’d like to see you try!
Well, actually I wouldn’t. It’d be a mess. (No offense).

In verse 29, Lao Tzu tells us that if we think we can control the universe and somehow improve it, we’re deluded. All we’d probably do would be to create universal disaster!

“To tamper with it is to spoil it,” he says. “To grasp it is to lose it.”

We all tend to have a pretty clear idea of how we think life should be and how we should be.

But our notions of ‘should’ are more often than not based upon ignorance.

Now, no one likes to think of themselves as ignorant. But it’s a fact that as individuals, we only ever have access to limited information. At any given time, we can only see a very small part of the overall picture. What we DO know will always be outweighed by what we DON’T know. Humans don’t like to readily acknowledge that. As such, most people are highly ignorant of just how ignorant they are.

In light of this humbling realization, how can we say with any certainty how things should be?

Life is a chain of cause and effect dating back to the very origin of the universe. As Carl Sagan once said, “in order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the entire universe”. Things are as they are because of everything that’s come before.

We also never know how things are going to turn out. The thing I desperately want today is often the thing that brings me misery tomorrow. And quite often good things come out of seemingly ‘bad’ things. That’s why the symbol of yin and yang is intimately associated with Taoism. Good and bad, light and dark, are inseparably intertwined.

3. Bend with the wind and flow like water
What we resist doesn’t just persist, it can also break us.

Our resistance to life can often be our undoing.

Something doesn’t go as we wanted it, and the mind gets locked into a vicious and self-destructive spiral of negativity. We suffer, and we generally make those around us suffer too.

The fact is, whatever happened happened, and no amount of complaining and tantrum-throwing will change that.

Arguing with reality causes pain, and it’s an argument we’ll never win. Reality will kick our ass, every single time.

We tend to think of resistance as being a sign of strength, so the concept of nonresistance is a difficult concept for many people to understand.

But Lao Tzu explains it perfectly in Verse 76:

“Stiffness is a companion of death; flexibility a companion of life. An army that cannot yield will be defeated. A tree that cannot bend will crack in the wind.”

Like the tree, we have to bend with life. If we don’t, our own rigidity will break us.

Life is a dance; a succession of experience — both good and bad, pleasurable and painful, happy and sad. There’s no changing that. All we can do is change the way we respond to it.

By accepting that this is simply the nature of reality, we learn to flow with life.

We let the wind blow when it wants to. We let our branches bend and thus ‘yield to overcome’ (a Taoist principle prevalent in many martial arts). It always pays to remember that every experience is only temporary. Even nature with all its might can’t create a storm that will last forever.

Ever fascinated by the elements, Lao Tzu also uses water as a metaphor for the Tao.

Although the softest and most yielding of substances, water is capable of dissolving even the hardest and most rigid of things.

Think about it. What else can literally dissolve mountains and carve great canyons?

Rock may seem harder and more enduring, but it’s water that shapes our very landscape, as well as providing essential life-giving properties for all beings.

Be like water, Lao Tzu says. Flow with ease, knowing that we’re always on a return journey to our source. Obstacles may come our way, but when they do, we simply maneuver around them, just as water flows around rocks.

Flow with ease, knowing that we’re always on a return journey to our source. Obstacles may come our way, but when they do, we simply maneuver around them, just as water flows around rocks.

Obstacles may come our way, but when they do, we simply maneuver around them, as water flows around rocks.

Why be a ‘rock person’ when you can be a ‘water person’? The flexible will always outlive the rigid.


4. Empty yourself
So much of our life experience is based around trying to fill ourselves up. Our days are full of ceaseless activity and our minds are always ticking away twenty to the dozen. We’re driven by the need to acquire and accumulate, but Lao Tzu, perhaps the original contrarian, suggests we instead adopt a practice of daily diminishing.

That doesn’t sound great, does it? The very word ‘diminish’ has a negative connotation. This one is a hard sell, I admit. But Lao Tzu warns that “we often gain by losing and lose by gaining” and that “success can be as dangerous as failure”.

Let’s be objective. The more we have, the more we have to worry about, because the more we have to lose.

We can spend months or years chasing after our dream job or the perfect relationship. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. But, it’s an unavoidable fact that even when we attain the ideal job or relationship, our joy will probably be quite short-lived. Why? Because, once gained, we then have to worry about maintaining it! We often find that maintaining the objects of our acquisition can be an even greater challenge than acquiring them. That’s why the more we have, the more we have to stress about. Life can be a little perverse, can’t it?

That’s why Lao Tzu suggests we “empty ourselves”. By daily diminishing, we simply let go of all the things we are holding onto which we think we need, including old thoughts, beliefs and habits that no longer serve us. It doesn’t mean giving away all our possessions and heading off to live in a cave. It simply means letting go of our mental tendency to cling to things.

It means, chill, bro.

Our problems pretty much just exist as thoughts in our mind. In other words, for the problem to be, we need to be thinking about it. If our attention moves elsewhere, the problem ceases to exist until we next think about it.

Lao Tzu’s simple, no-nonsense solution?

“Renounce ceaseless thinking and your problems will end.”

This is echoed throughout the text:

“Tame your restless mind until you attain perfect harmony”.

“If you can empty your mind of thoughts, your heart will know the tranquility of peace.”

Of course, to empty the mind of thoughts is like trying to empty the ocean of water.

Fortunately, that’s not necessary.

What we need to do is simply cease getting pulled in by our thoughts. We allow them to come and go, and don’t get too swept away by them. Echoing his earlier advice, we bend with the wind and flow like water.

Meditation is an excellent practice in this regard. Even just a few minutes a day will, over time, rewire the brain, enabling us to take a more objective view of the content of our mind.

It also opens us up to the astonishing and liberating realization that we are not actually the content of our mind.

We are that which witnesses the mind — ever-present, pure, changeless awareness.

This is the essence of Self-knowledge and is the gateway to freedom.

5. “The more you care about other people’s approval, the more you become their prisoner.”

This quote from verse 9 is self-explanatory, but it’s been a huge lesson in my life.

As social beings, we’re hard-wired to care about other people’s opinions. We desperately want to fit in with the tribe. Historically, to be cast out of the tribe meant certain death. But we can no longer trade our authenticity and uniqueness as human beings just for a tacit pat on the back and an assurance that we’re ‘okay’.

The only approval you should really be worried about is your own.

Follow your heart, do your best, and let other people think what they think — because they will anyway.

6. Don’t try to rush things to completion.
Timing is everything in life. Human beings are quite big on instant gratification. We want things as we want them, when we want them. But things take time and the circumstances have to be right for anything to happen. A seed won’t grow into a tree overnight. It can’t be forced. If we reach into the soil and try to ‘force’ it to germinate, we’ll actually just destroy it altogether.

As Lao Tzu says in Verse 64:

“Rushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. By forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe.”

When our hearts and minds are in alignment with the Tao, when we’re in the full flow of life, instead of trying to force things, we simply tune into the situation and allow the right action to emerge almost spontaneously.

That’s how the creative mind truly works anyway — not by force, but by inspiration and insight.

Again, “the Tao does nothing, yet nothing is left undone.”

7. “The world is won by those who let it go.”
This quote is from one translation of verse 48. It highlights the ‘water’ approach of the Tao Te Ching (flow) as opposed to the ‘fire’ approach of modern life (force).

To ‘win the world’ means to find our place in it; to find fulfillment and to contribute to the whole, in alignment with our own nature, talents, and skills. That’s a slightly more holistic take on life than our culture’s general mode of going out there with our guns blazing, trying to compete, conquer, and come out victorious to the detriment of others. Look at big business. Look at our politicians. They might seem to have ‘won the world’, but have they truly? What are the fruits of their actions? Do they embody what Lao Tzu calls “the three jewels” of compassion, moderation, and humility? Is the world benefitted by such ‘winners’? Or does the world actually lose?

I believe we ‘win the world’ by stop trying to win.

Instead of chasing certain results, which are usually driven by ego and insecurity (and which are never really under our control anyway), we simply do what we love as a way of giving something back to the world.

“When you realize there is nothing lacking,” Lao Tzu says, “the whole world belongs to you. When you realize you have enough, you are truly rich.”

What we let go is our ambition, greed, and the gratuitous need for more.

We actually already have all that we need. Life gave us everything, and I mean EVERYTHING. Only a miser would then try to extract more from it, without any thought to giving something back.

Gratitude fosters compassion, and compassion is the one thing the world needs more of.

When action is driven by compassion, everybody wins.

In the final verse, Lao Tzu says:

“The Sage does not accumulate anything, but gives everything to others. The more he does for others, the happier he is. The more he gives to others, the wealthier he is. The Sage acts for the good of all, opposing himself to no one.”

We need Sages like this! Such a mindset would change the world overnight. We save the world not by conquering it, or trying to come out on top, but by giving something back to it.

Life lives life effortlessly, and life gives to life effortlessly. So too can we.

https://www.unbrokenself.com/7-life-changing-things-i-learned-from-the-tao-te-ching/ 
By Rory Mackay 
Amazon.com paperback / Amazon.com Kindle edition


Saturday, June 10, 2023

Did You Know? WE ARE ALL WRONG

Remember this.
I see you only through the lense of my world and life view, 
which is distorted.
You see me only through the lense of your world and life view, 
which is distorted.

That world and life view is fragile and vulnerable, built on sand; based on our conditioning, life experiences, things people and culture have told us all our lives, mostly unchallenged, our sphere of influence, books, teachers, and most of all our zip code.

Maybe, just maybe, that is why it is so important that we do not judge each other.
Judging is a form of domination and prejudice, hence a form of violence, just like labeling. 
Judging further distorts my perception and your perception of others, of issues, of truth, of reality, of our whole world.

Hmm. This then means 
WE ARE ALL WRONG!
None of us really know.
No wonder we have become so divided, so polarized.

Why do we hate difference so much, when it is inevitable and it expands and deepens us so?

Why do we do and think things that are so wrong and so self destructive?

Loving people live in a loving world.
Hostile people live in a hostile world.

Here is a humbling collection of quotes that I must remember:

“Each of us creates a picture of our world by connecting a dozen or so of the trillions of dots that would need to be connected to make a ‘true’ portrait of the universe.” -- Sam Keen

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble; it’s what you know for sure that ain’t so.” – Mark Twain

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.” - Bertrand Russell

“There is more faith in honest doubt than in all your Creeds” – A. L. Tennyson

"Those who know
 don't talk. 
Those who talk
don't know.

"Close your mouth,
Block off your senses,
Blunt your sharpness,
Untie your knots,
Soften your glare,
Settle your dust.
This is the primal identity."
(Lao Tzu, 2500 years ago)

Excellent Article!
https://markmanson.net/wrong-about-everything

Saturday, May 13, 2023

A Framework for Inquiry and Reflection (A Preface for Living with Open Hands 2.0)

A Framework for Inquiry and Reflection

 A Preface for Living with Open Hands 2.0

The Context

I began blogging Living with Open Hands 1.0 on April Fool's Day, 2006... quite proverbial. Little did I know the total upheaval that I’d experience. Writing had become, unintentionally and surprisingly, a deeply disruptive transformative process of inquiry and introspection for me. And with this inner insurgency running parallel to the outer assault, the tsunami that life dealt me at that time, I will never be the same again. Actually, I don’t think I’d be alive if it weren’t for the process of writing. But after about 17 years of contemplative writing, challenging myself daily, deeply, and painfully, I started to see that I had only begun to clear the internal clutter and sort what is real from what is not. 

The Cliff and the Abyss

I found myself dangling at the edge of a cliff, waiting for the fog to clear, staring into the abyss wondering whether to cling for dear life trying to impulsively climb back up to where it is safe or to let go and let myself fall, plunging deeper and deeper into the sheer terror of the abyss, deeper into darkness, and yet, somehow, closer to the light. I knew there was nothing left for me up top in the safe terrain above the cliff and yet I hung on. For most of my life, I’ve been unintentionally getting closer and closer to that edge. Then, when I started writing, I found myself reflectively sitting above the fray without participation; observing, wondering, clinging to fear of the unknown, unwilling to take the plunge; just sitting, reflecting, expanding my understanding from a safe distance. Then life blindsided me, I lost my footing, went over the edge, clinging for dear life. All the while, life continued to batter and bruise me leaving me hanging there tattered and torn, wrecked, bashed and dashing against the rocks; waiting, watching, wondering. During those 12 years of writing 1.0, I did scramble desperately back to safety over and over. But 5 years ago, before starting writing 2.0, I had lost my footing one last time, never to return to safety and security, comfort and certainty. I knew these were but fictions, stories we tell ourselves, gods of the age. I was beginning to understand that there were two ways to live life; with clenched fists, clinging to fantasies and illusions that I had been fed all my life OR with open hands, letting go and allowing life to show me reality as it is. I knew I had to choose Living with Open Hands as an expression of an Open Mind, Open Heart, Open Will. One time I had a spiritual teacher warn me, saying, don’t pray for wisdom unless you are willing to go through what it takes to get wisdom. This process is sort of like that. Purifying gold requires it going through the fire to burn off the dross.


By 2018, I could no longer keep writing and still be authentic, true to my heart, true to myself. All of my creativity seized up like an engine with a cracked block with this all encompassing impasse and decision point. I knew in my head that I had been believing the lies and I had been systematically identifying the myths and stories in my head that I’ve always believed and then sorting the trash from the treasures. Even the great American Dream of God, religion, family, career, home-ownership had all been wiped out, ripped from my grasp. But it was the internal values and beliefs that I was hoping to hold on to. I thought that writing Living with Open Hands 1.0 was making me a better Christian,  a better human, and a better believer in God. It definitely did that for a time but the disruptive transformative process kept on going deeper and deeper, challenging every fiber in my being to live up to what I’ve been discovering and now believe in my head. The distance from the head to the heart seems short physically and intellectually, but spiritually and emotionally it was the greatest distance on earth. It was the difference between knowing in my head and knowing in my heart; between living with open hands expressed by an open mind, open heart, open will; and living with clenched fists, unwilling to let go of that which is not and let come what is, living what is real. No more illusions.


Conceptually, I thought I was living with open hands and following the truth wherever it led but realistically and contemplatively I could see that my clenched fist was hanging on for dear life. One finger at a time, I had to realize the extent of my grip and peel back each finger. Part of that process was getting to a state of “Freedom from the Known”, learning to listen deeply to all of that which I already know and have always known down deep in my bones, knowing that once I understand I must let go over and over and over. That is life’s process. I grasp. I let go. And I fall into the abyss. Nothing is mine to hang on to. Life is not mine to know or to have.


“And then came human beings; humans wanted to cling but there was nothing to cling to.”

“Live to the point of tears.”

~ Albert Camus


I am not mine to have and to keep protectively out of the storm that is raging outside. And my final stronghold that I clung to during my last time of dangling over the edge, shockingly, was my belief in God. That one, I never expected. While writing 1.0, I was opening my mind and my heart and becoming more inclusive and compassionate, a better human being.


But as I followed the truth wherever it might lead, I unexpectedly found Christianity and God, dogma and doctrine, creeds and theology slipping away knowing they are nothing but human constructs that are exclusive rather than inclusive. Hanging on over the edge, those roots and vines I was clinging to snapped and I found myself falling, a forced letting go. If nothing is mine to cling to, then nothing means nothing. My kids are not mine. My family is not mine. My career is not mine. My house, my possessions, my American dream, everything I clung to and imagined to be mine; none of it is mine. My health is not mine. I am not mine. It is all temporal. It is not certain. It is fleeting, like dust in the wind. Then I could see that my concept and image of God is not mine, in fact, it is nothing more than a story that I imagine in my head. After all, all images are imagined fictions. They may point to something that is real but the question is, is there anything real to point to? 


Back to the metaphor of the cliff and the abyss, I am now falling throughout life, not knowing what is around the next bend, but welcoming whatever comes, embracing life as it is, anticipating death as it is; without pretense, without agenda, without expectation, without knowing, without hope, without appeal.


For a description of what happened during that in-between-blogs writer’s block, feel free to check out this rough outline that this blog is based on, and of what I now call the inner insurgency that was happening in my head and in my heart. My Philosophical Evolution: https://livingwithopenhands2.blogspot.com/p/my-philosophical-evolution.html 

See also, Grounded in Groundlessness


After all, what is life but learning to fall; 

letting go, clinging no more.

What is life but learning to fail;

embracing the heartbreak, then getting up.


Falling into the abyss, “we are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” (Charles Bukowski)

I knew that if I were to ever write again, I would have to write about what Bukowski says above. I can't write fantasies. I have to be honest with myself and authentic in my writing. I could not hide the depth of my learning and transformation that went all the way down to the ground within. I have to live without faking it. I have to no longer seek comfort, security, and certainty. I have to suspend all assumptions, all conditioning, all of the stories I’ve been telling myself all of my life. I have to simplify life to the most basic, foundational essentials (Bedrock of Being). I had to follow truth wherever it leads. I have to live a life without any external conjured up meaning and purpose out there somewhere; because the meaning and purpose of life is within. TO LIVE! Here and now! My life must be a reflection of the shape of my heart if I am to live with integrity. No more philosophical suicide.


I felt that 1.0 had gone as far as it could in me and that I had to restart everything by creating 2.0 where I can speak freely, controversially, offensively if need be; speaking the truth in love, mostly to myself but also to those that have ears to hear. I needed to make sure that family and friends, people from my past would not come after me nipping at my heels trying to convert me back to the safety, fantasy, and fiction of the bubble.


“Only by exploring and sharing my autobiography can I witness my discoveries of the sacred. My story is not normative. I am under no illusions that I am a saint, a hero, or a model for anyone. I do not write in order to say: Here is the map for you to follow. I only share some of the twists and turns of my journey in order to encourage you to take your own story seriously. Examine the sacred text of your own experience, reconstruct the events and relationships that went into the creation of your being, re-collect memories, and form them into a narrative that makes your life a once-told tale.” (Sam Keen)

The Framework

Living with Open Hands 2.0 -- is a “way” for me to investigate my interior landscape. There are no answers here, only questions. This is a process of inquiry and introspection, deconstruction, deconversion, and total reconstruction of my essence and my world and life view .

  • A “way” is not a belief system, a creed, or a doctrine. It is a goad to prod us to continually rethink everything. Most of our beliefs and actions come from thought that is operating automatically. Thought is continually thinking it is running the place (YOU!). It can be called conditioning, habit, reactions, cultural downloads, media influences, memes, dogma, brainwashing, childhood teachings. These are all programs running just beneath the surface of our awareness, noticeable only in obscurity; for instance, in the middle of the night. We cannot be self-determined and take responsibility for our lives if we do not realize the subconscious forces at play, the myths that drive us.

  • “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.” (Carl Jung)

  • "I asked myself, 'What is the myth you are living?' and found that I did not know. So... I took it upon myself to get to know my myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks... I simply had to know what unconscious or preconscious myth was forming me." (Carl Jung)

  • If you choose, it can cause internal insurgency: demise, deconversion, deconstruction, and reconstruction resulting in a transformation of one’s worldview or lens or perspective. If not, then it just may be a way to live an examined life. We learn to See and we learn to understand only if we seek understanding with our whole heart and mind that are open to follow the truth wherever it may lead. And that is only to the extent that you want it and allow it.

  • This is not meant to convince us to think differently. It is meant to help us think, period. And prodding us to thinking about our thinking and to understand how thought works. We lack a natural proprioception of thought, so often our thoughts take over without our awareness. Without this understanding, we may not know what perceptions of life that our subconscious thinking gives us.

  • “We could say that practically all the problems of the human race are due to the fact that thought is not proprioceptive.”   – David Bohm (Source: On Dialogue, 1996)

  • I needed a new way of seeing life, seeing everything; a new framework for understanding, a new worldview.

  • "The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."  Marcel Proust."


“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
T.S. Eliot

It is not a matter of IF we are conditioned because we all are to one degree or another. The real questions are: Am I aware of my conditioning? Am I aware of the extent that it subconsciously drives and shapes me? Thought is conditioning. We are deeply conditioned and generally unaware of this conditioning.  This conditioning permeates all our thought, emotion, and actions and creates immense confusion and incoherence.  The lack of attention to this conditioning is what prevents it from being cleared up.

“It is imperative, absolutely essential for the future of humanity that we are concerned with the brain which is conditioned. If one is aware of that, then we can proceed to ask whether it is possible to free the brain.”

“We think the crisis is outside of us; it is in us.  The crisis is in our consciousness.”     – Jiddu Krishnamurti (Source: Conversation between Jiddu Krishnamurti and Jonas Salk in Ojai, California, March 1983)   https://bohmkrishnamurti.com/essays-etc/there-is-no-activism-there-is-only-proprioception-of-thought/ 

“Thought creates the world and then says, ‘I didn’t do it!’” (David Bohm, physicist)


The Conditioned Self: J. Krishnamurti, David Bohm, and Saral Bohm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzcT-RKqnP0 


  • I did not choose this upheaval or unraveling of my soul. It chose me. This process ended up being an incredibly hard and hurtful heartbreak. It robbed me of everything I thought I had. And yet I am so grateful for how it changed me; opening my eyes, my ears, my hands, my mind, my heart, and my will to go wherever truth leads me.

  • I did not want to change or see or understand. I just wanted to be left alone. My life was fine. Nothing needed to change. Then everything fell apart; and I couldn’t put it all back together. It was like a shattered mirror I was desperate to fix. Hands bloodied, I tried and tried and tried for several years and I could not heal. I felt like I was being kicked when I was down. A simple fall ended up tearing me to pieces, dashing me against the rocks, and breaking my heart wide open. The good is that it stayed open, finally.

  • My pain wouldn’t subside. My wounds wouldn’t heal. A few months before everything fell apart in 2006, I felt the need to begin to write. I didn’t know why. But there was a growing unrest, a dissonance that eventually penetrated to the bone like tinnitus ringing in the bones of my ears. This was the beginning of an inward insurgency that has continued to take root and grow. Then life blindsided me; divorce, foreclosure, downsized, loss of my kids half time, loss of my mental health via depression, and I turned 50 all that spring. And that was the beginning of an outward assault. Writing is what kept me alive… It was a defensive weapon that pierced my personal facade and the facade of this world. It was a shield and shelter during the storm that allowed me to retreat and seek understanding.


Paradigm Shifts

There are two major paradigm shifts that happened through the process of writing that have changed me and shaped me to the core. These have given me a new perspective, a new understanding, a new way of seeing myself, others, and this world. They were the beginning of a new framework for understanding, a new worldview. They are sort of like a litmus test for all of life encompassing my values, beliefs, actions, reactions, and interactions. They have proven themselves so powerful that they are also the plumb line against which I can measure my life, my politics, my religion, my testimony, my compassion, and my basic humanity. For the past 5 years, I see so few people and things meeting these tests of just simply being human. But still I knew this is how I must live.


For me, it is very simple. I just ask myself how I See, how I have lived, and if I am worthy of the life I have been given, although these are not so simple to live by. It takes constant awareness and discernment. While discerning trash from treasures, any of my values and beliefs that do not measure up fall into the trash heap to be discarded as unworthy of the human spirit.


Here are the two tests I use:

  • Do I live life with clenched fists? Or am I Living with Open Hands as an expression of an Open Mind, Open Heart, Open Will?

  • Can I and Do I See the World Through the Eyes of the Brokenhearted and See this World Through My Own Eyes of Brokenheartedness? Bottom up? Or Top down? Most of the people in our present world and throughout history have been poor and downtrodden, longing for this world to become a world that works for all. But most of history has been written from the perspective of the winners, the oppressors, the conquerors, the powerful, those that are longing for this world not to change but to continue to shelter and sustain their own greed, power, and oppression.


This is how I live a life that is worthy of the space I consume. 

This is how I give more than I take.

Am I a consumer or a contributor?

Am I a taker or a giver?

And what is the purpose of this one precious life that I have been given?

The purpose of life is not to achieve greatness because it is those that are the least that are the greatest, it is those that are meek that inherit the earth because within the brokenness of all people is a hidden wholeness.


The purpose of life is not some destination physically or figuratively because life is right here and right now. Don't miss it.


The purpose of life is not to accomplish anything except to live and to be worthy of the life that we have been given.


“The meaning of life is to be alive.

It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.

And yet everybody rushes around in a great panic

as if it was necessary to achieve

something beyond themselves.”

(Alan Watts)



Life is NOT a Journey - Alan Watts


When we look at life as a journey or a trip to somewhere, then we become like children asking constantly, "are we there yet?" In case you haven't noticed, we live in an are-we-there-yet culture. For the traveler the point of the journey is the destination. That's what we are excited about, not the actual process of getting there. What if the point of the journey is the journey?


When we dance, we do not dance in order to get to the end. An orchestra does not play in order to get to the last note. People don't come and listen so that they can only hear the last note. It is the process, the whole thing that matters. Life is like a dance or an orchestra. We live to live, not to die. The point of life is not the afterlife, it is living each and every moment to the fullest extent, in revolt against the Absurd.


"The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is." (Marcel Proust)


“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
(T.S. Eliot)


"He who thinks he knows, doesn't know. 
He who knows that he doesn't know, knows. 
For in this context, to know is not to know. 
And not to know is to know." 
(Quoted in both Sanskrit and in the Tao-te Ching)

"Those who know do not speak.
Those who speak do not know."
(Lao Tzu)

"The wise man is the one 
who knows what he does not know." 
(Lao Tzu)



I write not because I know. 

I write because I don’t know.

 

Writing for me has become a 

deeply transformative process 

that is still going on 17 years later.



The beginning of all learning and wisdom

comes from an open heart and mind

that knows, "I don't know."


If I already know,

I can no longer learn.