The following questions and answers have all been fished directly from the Thought Pool and typed out while they were still wet and flapping about. The question will likely arise, 'Who is asking the questions? Who is answering?' A very good question! As usual, when we really look closely into it, we have no idea who is doing either.
Q: I feel really sorry for you. You seem to be going through life totally flat, with no emotion at all, just a meaningless existence. What is the point of that?
A: Note the phrase 'seem to be going through life'. Along with the misconception that you are a person who is 'going through life', it will seem as though there are all around you other people who are also 'going through life'. Then comes all the judgement and comparison. Which of these persons is going through life in the best way? How should a person go through life? What is the best way to go through life? What will happen when life has been gone through? What then?
Once the person misconception has fallen, it becomes quite clear that there isn't anyone that is 'going through life', and so all the questions about how life ought to be gone through or what will happen at the end of the going through are irrelevant.
Life lives itself, effortlessly, endlessly. The limiting judgements and comparisons are just pointless thought games.
Q: But what is the point of it all?
A: Already answered that one. It's the sharp bit at the end of it all.
Q: How should we deal with all the problems of the world? War, famine, Global Warming, poverty, wealth inequality, religious intolerance, to name but a few?
A: How to deal with an imaginary monster that appears in a dream? Imagine running away from it, or imagine fighting it? For the dream character, is there any choice in the matter? There are not any problems and there are not any worlds except the Problem Worlds that thought invents so that it can self-perpetuate.
Q: When will this mental struggle be over?
A: Some existence bubbles seem to expand rapidly and burst, others seem to expand to a certain size and then contract back to nothing. Either way, the question 'when' cannot really be answered, as time does not exist (and of course neither does anything else) except within the bubbles. When the bubble is no more, time is no more.
Q: Don't you miss the personal interaction? Being human and all that it entails? The ups, the downs, highs and lows ... relationship .... connection ... compassion ... LOVE?
A: Can an imaginary thing miss its imaginary life after it has ceased being imagined?
Q: How can you live with no belief? That is totally unthinkable! Like death.
A: Ha ha! Totally unthinkable. Maybe the question answered itself this time. :-)
Q: Everything seems to be a joke to you. You never take anything seriously. Isn't this just a bit shallow? Isn't it a cop out, running away from the reality of life with all its emotional depth?
A: There is an interesting phrase in English, that is 'taking yourself seriously'. There seems to be a very strong correlation between the extent to which the idea 'I am' is taken seriously and the extent to which the world in which the 'I am' idea is supposedly located is taken seriously. Now, it just so happens that as soon as the idea that there is a self is looked into closely, it is seen to be patently false, absurd, laughable. Once this absurdity is noticed, all the ideas about a world or a universe in which that supposed self was supposedly living also suddenly seem absurd.
Then all the questions that arise about both the self and the world are obviously laughable. It is no longer possible to take them seriously. Just as it isn't possible to re-believe in Santa or shove the cat back into the bag.
Q: How can you not want to make the world a better place? That's just lazy and selfish.
A: The world is not unwell. It does not need to be made better.
Q: Not unwell? Are you serious? What about all the war and famine and disease?
A: Conflict and destruction are a natural part of the cycle of life. Take one perfectly healthy human body as an example. Conflict and destruction are taking place all the time within it, and yet they are paid no attention whatsoever. Why shift attention up to the planetary level and then suddenly assume that the conflict and destruction need to be eliminated. If they were eliminated, what then? Continual, unrestricted growth, perhaps? This is often referred to as cancer by the doctors of the human form. But sooner or later, of course, the cancer itself destroys the host organism and itself. So there is no escape from the natural cycle, which always includes destruction one way or another.
Q: I sometimes read Masters saying that everything is nothing and nothing is everything. What do they mean?
A: Any attribute taken to totality immediately ends itself. Let us take an example. Consider desire. Imagine that one desires everything. There is a certain set of conditions present, or the present circumstances, and one desires all of them. This is the same as not desiring anything. One desires the circumstances to be exactly as they happen to be. One desires all of them, just as they are. This is the equivalent of no desire at all, because the desire is already met or fulfilled, instantly. No time needs to pass at all.
Another word used for this is unconditional love. The full circle is zero. The whole is the hole.
The same applies to anything. Try it out. Take the thing and take it to totality. It will suddenly vanish every time.
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