There is both external and internal conflict. There are the conflicts between nations, sects, religions and politics and there are the conflicts between what we want for ourselves and what we have; the reality of our own lives. Both the internal and the external are in conflict. So we continue to be in the sorrow that is life as we know it with our resentments, resistances and conflicts.
Is there no way out of this prison we have made for ourselves? We try to make alterations and improvements to what we call our self development but we are nearly always already in the prison whilst trying to make these changes. All change then is born only out of our conditioning, our culture, our education, our family and friends. We can only react in the framework we find ourselves in, the prison. From this position can we ever take the revolutionary and transformational steps required to change our lives fundamentally?
If we are really serious about fundamental change where do we begin? The teachings of others must be put to the most intense and honest questioning. We must seek out the understanding of ourselves by ourselves otherwise we are surely just mimicking others with little real understanding. Will the words of others solve our deepest fears, or help us understand our need for security and self importance?
Question this writing too as well as those in authority in your society. Question too the people and organisations who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Do it with an independent mind, not one born from your conditioned thinking. This requires enormous attention as it is so easy to slip back into our fragmented thinking full of its narrow cultural conditioning and our self centred ways of defining ourselves from our past memories and hurts.
Ask why we are resentful when required to do things we do not want to do. See where the answer comes from and what does it tell you. If you can do this with complete honesty and a genuine passion for the truth you will learn the fact at that moment. The ‘fact’ is the reality not the 'I wish this wasn't so' response.
More thought at the moment of the realisation of the fact or truth is more likely to be your conditioned and analytical response and therefore born of your past reactions and justification of yourself but do not take my word for it, you can find out for yourself. This enquiry, if you are earnest, needs only the truth of the moment, not a detailed analytical analysis requiring conditioned knowledge and intellect. That analysis, full of conditioning, is how we got to this fragmented world we inhabit externally and internally, it is not required for the truth. To paraphrase the words of another I have understood; when there is no observer there is only the observed.
Is it not time to put aside that which has got us to where we are and to understand ourselves from moment to moment in fact and truth so we can take action that is fundamentally different?
This is not the action, constrained by the past and of identification with a goal or an ambition but action born of the understanding of the fact and truth of now and then it can be what is required rather then what we selfishly desire or want to placate our fears, need for security and our so called masters.
If only knowledge and academic cleverness was required to change the way we behave in the world, towards one another and to ourselves we would surely have done it by now.
