Reality is Information: Re-Configure it!
Alright, let me offer a paradigm shift: I’m gonna call this the Diamond Mind of Desire.
Now, the term “diamond mind” is used in Buddhism and other traditions, but I’m going to give a slightly different signification for it. At the ego level, you’ve got four basic emotions that are presentable in public that people tend to alternate: You can be sad, mad, glad, or scad. OK, scad means you’re really “scad” of something—that’s a New York accent for “scared” (because it looks better to have the rhyme, so we make little compromises here). So, don’t be scad about this. But, if you’re mad, sad, glad, or scad, it’s OK—you know, the ego can talk about it, that’s what most people will talk to therapists about, and—or they will share them with each other. People aren’t afraid of sharing those things. There’s like, “Oh, OK, we all feel those things, as egos”. But that’s only the, let’s say, the visible spectrum of emotional light, if you wish. Then, you’ve got the lower and the higher parts of the diamond.
Which one should I go to first? The lower first, alright. Actually, I made the diagram, I’m going to take a look at it because I want to make sure I follow my own—I just came up with this about an hour ago, so it didn’t exist before. Actually, I’m not sure that I like the way that I put it, but I think that what we have to deal with here is guilt, shame, and horror, at the next level. And, this level is harder to talk about and to feel. Because, it’s painful and, you know, shame is withering, it’s like, you want to die, right, when you’re feeling that, if it’s really bad. It could be a minor form of it, but toxic shame—there’s a healthy shame in which you use that to get to a higher level. But these three are often what you would rather not talk about, right? You can relate to that.
And then if it gets really worse you get down to dismay and dread. So, dismay is like defeat, right? A total sense of defeat in life. And dread, of course, is even worse than horror. And, so both of those—if you feel those—you’re gonna have a very bad day. And, there are a lot of people whose egos have fallen into that level. And, if it is in that level, then you are in an emergency situation, because it’s not bearable for a long period. When people fall into this, they commit suicide, or they take some high doses of drugs, or they go crazy, or they have meltdown of some kind, or a physical illness, or some very bad karmic crash of some kind. So, there’s an epidemic of people in that level of it. So, if you are smart and you don’t kill yourself, this is when, I’m gonna write swaha here—swaha is a term that we use from Sanskrit, it basically means total surrender—I’m throwing myself into the sacrificial fire, throwing my ego in, I’m done with the ego. And, you can actually, oddly enough, do it more easily from that hell realm than you can from the normal, sad, mad, glad, “everything’s OK” level.
So, it’s a blessing if you’re in a hell realm, because, it means it has become so urgent—in India they say your “hair’s on fire”—then you’ve got to dive into the pool, you’ve got to escape your ego. And, suicide is not an escape. I think everyone here probably knows, you’re going to come back if there is a tendency that has not been settled and resolved in life. Death is not the end. And, that energy will bring you back into another life where you’ll have to deal with the same stuff again—but in a worse situation. So, I don’t recommend that way out, but I do recommend total surrender into the sacrificial fire of the supreme consciousness.
Alright, what did I write for these higher levels? The first one is—let’s see—about this there’s a state of astonishment, in moments of which you’re going to feel awe—literally awe of the incredible, miraculous nature of life—and total joy of being alive, and being conscious, and being aware. And, that’s the realm where life gets interesting. You could say that’s the celestial realm—and this is the human realm. You want to get into that celestial realm. But even this is only an intermediary dimension of consciousness, and, above that is the truth of being awakened.
“Awakened” means being a Buddha. To be awakened is to be aware of who you are beyond the ego, beyond the limitations of thought, beyond the constraints of time and space, and of language and conceptualization. It’s a wakefulness that has instantaneous understanding of everything that’s happening—without thinking about it—you are attuned. So, you could say, awakening and attunement are identical in a way. And, the other side of that that comes with it is, that you realize that you are consciousness, your body is a vehicle—you’re not the body. But what are you then? You see, you are an unmanifest Awareness. You don’t actually exist in this world. You realize the world as a fractal holographic illusion. You’re not in it, you’re operating the character in the video game, but you’re no longer the one in the game. And, because you’re not in the game, you have nothing to lose. And, because you’re not in the game, you don’t need to get anything from the game. But you’re able to give something to the other players in the game, to help them get out of hell realms, and awakened and feel joy. So, it shifts your psychic economy and allows you to be someone who is a catalyst for healing and for liberation. It’s a much nicer way of living.
Then beyond that, I’m going to write it as the acronym: ALL It’s Aware Luminous Love. There’s a realization that comes, that everything is awareness, because everything that arises, arises in your awareness and actually is the awareness itself. The intelligence that you are, is reflected in what arises as the world—which is a dream. So, the consciousness is dreaming the world. But, when you ask what is the dream made of, what is the “dream stuff” itself? It’s light. And that’s true for this so-called “material world”—it’s all light. And the only reason for the being—the becoming.
This cosmic process that we’re involved in is because of love. Because love can only be expressed in the context of a world in which love is useful, love is necessary, love is salvation, love is the power that creates beauty, that brings joy, that brings harmony, that brings satisfaction and fulfillment. And so, we want to create a world in which those qualities make life worth living. In the hell realm, life is not worth living. We now live in a system, a social system that pushes people down into dismay and dread. The nature of the system—its oppressive qualities, its back-stabbing, savage ways of money making, and its instability, and lack of community, and lack of goodness—it’s a world full of crime, and full of deception, and degradation, and corruption—all of that—it comes from the ego having collectively fallen into these lower levels, and then projecting that suffering out to the multitudes.
So, if we want to shift the world, we want to rise to the highest part of the diamond. And, from there we are able to eliminate all of that lower darkness by shining that light—that love light into it—and helping the whole world become free of suffering. And what other reason really is there for being here? This is how we graduate from this school of life. And so, it’s the final exam of whether you’re able to do that—even under extreme conditions of pressure, and negativity, and pain, and bad karma—all of those conditions that tend to handicap us in our feeling that we have the luxury to love, and to be in joy and to be creative, and to express ourselves fully and realize our potential. None of those obstacles are real, they are part of the delusional matrix that keeps us enslaved to the system.
So, if we want our freedom, it’s not by rebelling against the system, it’s by changing it from within, by raising the collective consciousness to a higher level. And, the only way to do that is to raise your own to that level. And then, because the world is fractal in nature, and it’s a morphogenetic field—that wave of higher consciousness will gradually disseminate itself throughout the planet, and things can change in a very beautiful way very quickly, magically. But only if we are true in our giving of ourselves to that purpose, and not living for the ego and its petty enjoyments that are the cause of its suffering.
So, that’s the reason why this ashram exists. At the core we’re a wisdom school, we teach the way out of the labyrinth of the ego into the diamond heights of the luminous divine mind, and we teach how to help others reach that. And around the wisdom school is a residential community of beings who want to live in such an energy field and create a model community of those who have transcended, or are in the process of transcending, the ego level, and who want to share and help others to become free. So, it’s a school, a community, and a retreat center, so that those who visit can gain these powers from your own liberation and go out and spread that power, that vibrational frequency throughout the planet, and create a network of interconnected beings who are sharing the same flow of energy from that infinite Source.