Unfinished

Do you do all that you might to understand?

Or does the mind, with little resistance,

Capitulate to the ego’s need to be able to explain?

Do you strive to fully comprehend?

Or does the ego, with little reflection,

Choose to believe the stories that the mind creates?

Do you truly want to understand?

Or try to create the impression that you understand?

Have you ever considered the difference?

Does the need to be able to explain,

To appear, if only to the ego, that you understand,

Emblinden you to the fact that the mind’s narrative is not truth?

Is the strength of your conviction in your understanding,

Such that you impose your understanding on others,

As if it were truth?

How such is the strength of your understanding of your conviction?

How often do you think about how you think?

How often do you think about why you think what you think?

How often do you think whilst you’re thinking?

How often do you thoughtlessly think,

That what you think must be well-thought,

Because, well, you thought it?

In this material universe, understood to have existed for millions of millenia,

A universe of tantamount to infinite experiences, perceptions and perspectives,

All else aside, you are consciousness,

Conscious of having been conscious for but a handful of years.

The sum total of your experience,

An infinitesimal fraction of the whole.

Your perspective and perception,

By their very essence limited,

Are myriad times more so,

Compared to all those that are, have been and will be.

Do you account for this before imposing your understanding,

As if it were truth?

You’ve been tricked by magic,

And unless you’re blind of eye,

You’ve been illusioned by optics.

There are times you’ve read or heard,

What you’ve wanted or expected,

Rather than that written or said.

Reality is very much what you make of it.

Are you blind of mind to how very much you make up?

Do you account for this before imposing your understanding,

As if it were truth?

Your beliefs, your values, your judgements,

Your cognitive biases, your use of heuristics,

The mind’s default to narrative,

Your weaknesses, dislikes and your prejudices.

You expectations and your norms,

Your likes, your wants, your needs,

Your comfort, your convenience,

Your hopes and your fears.

Do you account for these before you impose your understanding,

As if it were truth?

In order that you truly understand,

You must understand why you understand what you understand,

You must understand yourself.

In complex interplay with others,

You must understand that they are not you.

You must understand why they understand what they understand,

You must understand them.

So much understanding to be understood,

That you truly understand.

Is there any wonder you’ve got it wrong so many times?

And at what cost?

You can choose to surrender the need for explanation.

You can choose to forgo the ego’s want to appear to understand.

You can choose to withstand the mind’s urge to ‘make sense’ of things,

Through stories that only make sense,

With all the conditions and caveats,

Prerequisites and footnotes,

And baggage and bullshit,

That aberrate the lens that is the perspective.

That warped and pitted lens through which no one perceives but you.

You can choose to be content with not knowing,

And ponder and reason and explore.

And question and question and question,

And question and question some more.

Collaboratively, mind,

Not combatively, mind

Nor disinterestedly, mind,

And with an open mind.

Question with interest and compassion,

Not as a demand for information, an interrogation.

Seek connection, not division.

You can choose to spend less time,

And energy on pretence.

And engage in that free of perspective,

Being absolute in your presence.

Without emotion or thought,

And resisting the urge to put it to word,

Without trying to make sense of that which you sense,

Which taints what you sense with non-sense,

Allow the consciousness pure experience.

Sit under a tree,

Look at a bee,

Hum diddly dee.

These whimsical examples are chosen on purpose,

For what you do doesn’t matter,

What does is the purpose.

Whatever it be that you choose to do,

Let it be all and everything you do.

Be in that moment,

With a bee in that moment,

Under a tree or humming a tune.

Don’t provoke that the mind pay heed,

Don’t give it lyrics to listen to,

Or words to read.

Whether seeing or hearing,

Smelling, or touching,

Tasting or otherwise sensing,

Resist the urge to recognise and name,

And categorise and order.

Rather than try to explain,

Practise raw perception.

The point is not to interpret but sense.

And without the interposition of the mind,

Allow consciousness pure experience.

Don’t see colours - yellow and black,

Don’t see body parts - abdomen, head, and thorax.

Don’t hear buzzing as a frequency of sound,

Produced by wings moving up and down.

Through the air.

Just fixedly listen.

And fixedly stare.

The mind quiet.

No filtering.

No processing.

And with the senses focussed solely on she,

Or her or they or it, him or he; It doesn’t matter,

Let your consciousness know the essence of Bee.

Immerse yourself equally in everyday tasks.

Showering, dressing, eating;

Whatever it be, be present.

Focus wholly on now.

Pay attention to nothing but what you do.

That consciousness know the essence,

Of that which you do.

With practice you start to understand differently.

More holistically, more consciously.

You no longer do things just because: mindlessly.

Or the way someone ‘special’ to you showed you: sentimentally.

Or ‘that’s how I’ve always done it’: egotistically.

You start to do things more purposefully, more effectively, more otherly.

Whether more patiently or playfully or quickly or quietly,

Whichever other -ly you choose that it be,

You do it consciously.

Conscious understanding through perception,

Unhampered by the mind,

Effects as well as conscious change,

Contemplation of your ways.

You start to think about why you think what you think,

And why you feel what you feel,

And you start to understand why you understand what you understand.

And you evolve, consciously.

Of contemplation,

Comes the realisation,

That your beliefs, your values, your judgements,

Your cognitive biases, your use of heuristics,

The mind’s default to narrative,

Your weaknesses, dislikes and your prejudices,

Your expectations and your norms,

Your likes, your wants, your needs,

Your comfort, your convenience,

Your hopes and your fears,

Render impossible true understanding.

Inaccessible; the knowing of Truth.

And you evolve; consciously.

And there is a now,

In which you know,

That the you that is the you in you

Is not a mind and body serving an ego.

Rather consciousness;

Perceiving the sensations of a body,

The workings and failings of a mind,

And the machinations of an ego.

And you evolve; consciously.

You perceive differently.

You are aware, as you never before have been.

You are awake.

In this state of awareness,

Less encumbered by the mind,

Conscious understanding flourishes,

And inevitably you find,

That you discern with greater ease,

The essence of that which you perceive.

And there is a now,

In which you know,

In a manner hitherto not known.

Not the knowing of the mind.

Not the knowing of the kind,

That employs logic,

Or something akin,

Is born of perspective,

And then begins,

To form in word,

Crystalised from thought,

Which once is heard,

Rather than truly explain,

Reveals the perspective,

Of the mind whence it came.

Conscious knowing is quite distinct in

That it does not involve thinking.

It’s a knowing not of mind but being.

A state of knowingness,

Sensed as knowingness,

That manifests upon consciousness seeing,

The essence of that which you are perceiving.

Whether the recognition,

Of an essence already known to you,

Or the understanding in the moment,

Of the essence of that which is shown to you,

With experience you learn first to accept and then know,

That in a state of knowingness,

When consciousness knows,

You know that you know that you know what you know.

When in a state of knowingness,

You know what’s going on,

And of profoundly momentous import:

That it cannot be wrong.

For unlike belief and opinion,

And perspective-myred thought,

Creations of the ego-mind,

Without which they’d be nought,

The essence that consciousness knows,

Very simply: is.

Unchanged by any opinion of it:

It just simply is.

It’s not born of your mind,

It won’t die with your mind,

It has nothing to do with you,

Whether or not you’re there to perceive it:

It just very simply is.

All efforts to contest or refute’ll,

Be for the contester futile.

And appeals to maintain argument passional,

Reveal the main taint to argument rational:

Their premise is ‘I’,

It is ‘me’ it is ‘my’,

It is all about them and their business,

Whilst yours is simply:

It is what it is,

Knowing it futile to contest isness.

And is a now in which you know,

And whilst trite this is not glibness:

Everything simply is what it is,

You know the reality that is isness.

What a freeing place,

What a wholesome space,

In which you can be free of judgement,

For in order to judge,

You need opinions and beliefs,

To which you have attachment.

By this now you’ll likely find,

That material attachment is a thing of the past.

You’ll have things for their utility,

Or their inherent beautility,

But you’ve recognised the futility,

That is investing in things that don’t last.

Now, opinions are things,

And beliefs are things.

Both things that bring more suffering,

Than material things can ever bring.

What pain we impose upon ourselves,

What suffering is born within us,

When comparing these things,

That are nought but ideas,

To the reality that is isness.

All the pain that we have ever felt,

Comes from attachment to our fantasies.

And on comparing them to what we’ve been dealt,

Lamenting the void between idea and reality.

But in knowing the reality,

That everything simply is,

You see the ridiculosity,

In continuing like this:

Ideas - attachment,

Reality - fantasy,

Comparison,

Judgement - suffering.

IARFCJS!

IARFCJS!

It’s an acronym not easily pronounceable,

It’s not something that rolls off the tongue.

For this poem is concerned with reality, not convenience.

And that was a reminder to have some fun.