Belief and Truth

The truth just is.  It is not more true when large numbers believe it, nor diminished when others deny it.  I am told that most people once believed that the earth was flat.  This had no effect on the curvature of the earth. Truth never leaves us; it can’t.  Where would it go?  However, we can leave the truth, but it is always right here waiting for us when we return.

Just how do we leave the truth? 

We leave the truth by believing a thought.  There is some thought which we align with, for whatever reason.  Perhaps it supports our tribe in having power (political thoughts).  Perhaps it supports us in having a particular vision of ourselves (ego thoughts).  Perhaps it supports us in having the appearance of a world which conforms to our desires for predictability, safety, or consistency (superstitions fall into this category).

How do we return? 

That’s the great bugaboo, isn’t it?  First let me cite a failed, but popular strategy.  This is to find a “truth” which is somehow greater than the one we have believed and then to realign with it.  This is a failed strategy because the truth (reality) is always bigger than whatever concept we have of it.

Reality is the truth, and reality transcends all beliefs.  Any belief about reality is less true than reality itself.  Therefore, to align with the truth, the effective strategy (improbable as it may seem) is to abandon belief, in favor of the direct experience of reality.

World's Greatest Lover

What was it about Don Juan DeMarco? What is it that makes someone a great lover, perhaps even the greatest lover in the world. 

I think I have a clue. I have this "trick" that I do. As best I can describe it, I simply surrender to the reality that this being in front of me is EXACTLY what I desire. Instead of distracting myself with the thought that there is someone better, somewhere, I surrender to and let myself be charmed by the beauty that is in front of me, and I do mean surrender.  There is a vulnerability to being so completely taken by beauty.  Then guess what? I literally get to spend the evening with the most beautiful woman I can imagine, the woman of my dreams!  

Some would say, well yeah, but only because you believe in it.  To this I would answer, yes, and you are deprived, only because of your lack of belief.

I have lived as if the gulf between myself and loving was the lack of appropriate targets. That is utter bullshit. The only gulf is how vulnerable and loving I am willing to be in the moment. ~Carson Boyd

The greatest challenge for most of us is believing that we are worthy, right here, right now, before anything changes. What I am about to say flies in the face of accepted "truth" (in this upside down an backwards world) but worthiness doesn't have any prerequisites. Worthy is what you have always been, but this world probably went to work on you, when you were very young, to convince you otherwise.
If we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging. For most people this secretly occurs as really bad news and brings up an internal dialogue that goes something like: But, but, couldn't I just find someone else and nominate them to believe it for me? The short answer is no. Whether you believe you are worthy or that you are not, you will experience a world that validates your belief. ~Carson Boyd

Love's Champion

To love somebody is to look at them and see past all the bullshit, to see that it is meaningless, that beyond that is the core, which is radiant, pure, divine, and exquisitely beautiful. Just as it always was. We often resist this, as if to see how utterly lovable someone is, is a weakness, which leaves us at a disadvantage. 


But when we see through the BS to the divine, undeniably lovable core of another, how could we not love them? It becomes inconceivable. This is what we refer to when we pledge our eternal love and devotion. It isn't about knowing the future, it is about not being able to even imagine a time when this love would not be here, and it is EASY to do when you see the core; if you are attempting to love an ego, that can be a little more challenging.
We tend to think of a champion of Love as someone like Jesus, so filled with love that he forgave those who mistreated him and killed his body. That's a great model, and I intend to take nothing away from it. I seek to emulate that behavior myself. However, I am suggesting that it is a model, more important to the world of the ego, than the world of Being.


I would like to suggest another model. A champion of love is someone who is clean enough of egoic bullshit that it is easy to see the core when you look at them. It is easy to find love in our hearts when we see them, or even think of them. This is their great gift to the world. Ego would tell you that they have been gifted by God, since they occur as so very lovable. This is short sighted. The truth is that they are actually God's gift to you, because they occur as lovable. Ego feels diminished when others are seen as incredibly lovable, but remember, when it comes to love, ego is stark, raving, insane. Ego's version of Heaven is a place where everyone is in love with it. My version of Heaven is a place where I can't find a single being I am not absolutely in love with. What could be more fun than that?


Adyashanti said, "To be understood is nice, to understand is divine. To be forgiven is nice, to forgive is divine. To be loved is nice, to love is divine." 

~Carson Boyd 

To Tell the Truth

The other day someone asked me a question, and it was an issue that I have a position on. You know, the kind of thing where most of the people who know me, probably know what my answer would be to that question. I didn't want to offer an unconsidered answer, so I did what I often do when practicing TheWork. I ask the question and then let it sink into my heart, and listened for the answer. When the answer came back, it wasn't what either of us expected.


I notice that to tell the truth, sometimes I have to listen to something other than my mind.

A Thousand Names for Joy, by Byron Katie #69

69

When two great forces oppose each other,

the victory will go to the one that knows how to yield. 

It's not possible for something to be against you. There's no such thing as an enemy; no person, no belief, not even the ego is an enemy. It's just a misunderstanding: we perceive something as an enemy, when all we need to do is be present with it. It's just love arising in a form that we haven't understood yet. And questioning the mind allows beliefs to simply arise. The quiet mind realizes that no belief is true, it is immovable in that, so there's no belief it can attach to. It's comfortable with them all.

Your enemy is the teacher who shows you what you haven't healed yet. Any place you defend is where you're still suffering. There's nothing out there that can oppose you. There is just fluid motion, like the wind. You attach a story to what you perceive, and that story is your suffering. I am everything that I have ever called other people; they were me all along. Everything I ever called my enemy was me. Projection would have us see reality as a them and a me, but reality is much kinder. All enemies are your kind teachers, just waiting for you to realize it. (And that doesn't mean you have to invite them to dinner.) No one can be my enemy until I perceive him as threatening what I believe. If there's anything I'm afraid of losing, I have created a world where enemies are possible, and in such a world there's no way to understand that whatever I lose I am better off without.

I return home after a trip, I open the door, and the house has been cleaned out. The burglars have taken my money, my jewelry, the television, the stereo, my CD collection, appliances, computers; they've left just the furniture and some clothing. The house has a clean Zen look. I go through the rooms and see that this possession is gone, that one is gone. There's no sense of loss or violation. On the contrary, I picture the recipients and feel what joy these items will bring them. Maybe they'll give the jewelry to their wives or lovers, maybe they'll sell it at a pawn shop and feed their kids with the proceeds. I am filled with gratitude. My gratitude comes from the obvious lack of need for each item. How do I know I don't need it? It's gone. Why is my life better without it? That's easy: my life is simpler now. The items now belong to the burglars, they obviously needed the items more than I did; that's how the universe works. I feel such joy for them, even as I fill out the police report. I find it odd that the way of the world is to try to retrieve what is no longer ours, and yet I understand it. Filling out the police report is also the way of it. If the items are found, I'm ready to welcome them back. And because they are never found, I understand that the shift in ownership is the best thing for the world, for me, and for the burglars. I need only what I have at any given time, never more, and never less. We can never have a problem with possessions; the only problem is our thoughts about what we do or don't possess. What other suffering is possible?

The simple truth of it is that what happens is the best thing that can happen. People who can't see this are simply believing their own thoughts, and have to stay stuck in the illusion of a limited world, lost in the war with what is. It's a war they'll always lose, because it argues with reality, and reality is always benevolent. What actually happens is the best that can happen, whether you understand it or not. And until you understand it, there is no peace. 

Reality is always kinder than the story we tell ourselves about it. If I were to tell the story of reality, it would have to be a love story. The story would be told as life lives itself out, always kinder and kinder, with twists and turns that cannot be projected into the distance. For example, if my daughter dies, I realize that there is no self to be affected. It's not about me. This is about her life, my child's life, and I celebrate her freedom, because I know the freedom of unidentified mind-the unceasing bodiless mind that is finally awake to itself, the mind that never existed as a her, and the her that can never die. In this we are never separated. And that's just a beginning; it gets even kinder. I get to see what my child's children grow into because she was not there to teach them differently. Whenever I lose something, I've been spared. Every loss has to be a gain, unless the loss is being judged by a confused mind. I come to see what fills that space in my life because she isn't there. And because she lives in my heart, the kindness in my world cannot decrease, because something else enters the space that I held her in. Just when you think that life is so good that it can't get any better, it has to. That's a law.

I look at the leaf that has withered and gone crisp in its apparent lifelessness. The tree has had to let go of it as if it were nothing. It falls to the ground and begins to do its job, a different job now. It naturally does it, becomes mulch, becomes water and air. Eventually it becomes every element, it nourishes and becomes part of what makes the mother tree strong, substance and water and air and fire, everything doing its job in the moment it appears to be that. And again and again it lives the story of mind, the evolution of mind and what it projects as disservice in absolute service.

What Forgiveness Looks Like

The power of forgiveness was brought home to me as a direct experience, in a workshop when the leader suggested that one way we could cause ourselves to have a breakthrough would be to forgive someone.  At the break I called the guy my ex-wife left me for.

"Hey John, you got a minute?"

"Sure Carson, what's up?"

"Well, I realized that I've been carrying around this story that you are an asshole that broke up my family, and my marriage, and messed up my life."  (He responds by being quiet).  "And it is also true that I have a lot of respect for the integrity that you bring to your relationship with Merilee, and I really appreciate you taking good care of Merilee and Kimberly.


I realize that the impact of this story on me is that it has kept me from feeling anything more than a superficial friendship with you and it has kept me from feeling any sense of partnership with you, even though we are both dedicated to one of the same goals, which is that Merilee and Kimberly survive and flourish.  


I'm not willing to pay that price any longer, so I'm inventing the possibility that you and I can be friends and partners in taking care of them."


Then I stopped and gave him a chance to speak.  He said, "Wow Carson, this feels really good.  You know what, I've had that story too; that I was an asshole that did that to you."


I feel this was generous of him to give this up.  I responded, "Yeah John, I'm just completely done with that story, and I invite you to be done with it too.  Besides, you couldn't have done anything if she hadn't been looking for an exit."


We soon ended the call and I headed back into the workshop. When I reached for the door, a wave of well-being swept over me and I thought, "You know, I don't have to fix or change myself, or do anything different, to deserve to be loved, exactly the way that I am."  Then I wondered where the heck that had come from.  It was just out of the blue.  Then I realized that it, was basically what I had just communicated to John.  He didn't have to change or get better to deserve to be loved or appreciated.  I gave it to him, and I'm the one who received it.


I say that this is because there is only one of us here; one Being, many faces. There is no one to give love to, but me.  There is no one to withhold love from but me.  Or in your case, you.  I just finally got a clue.


So, if you would like to play with this idea, to prove it for yourself, you might make a game, to see if you can actually diminish your supply of love by giving it away.