clearing out a relative’s attic. If I’d have read this when younger it wouldn’t have meant a damn thing. Non-duality seemed to drop in my lap without any warning; perhaps it will do the same for you. If it’s way in the future, dear reader, goodness knows what technology you will have and what tyrants and tossers are around manipulating your thought processes and telling you how to be. All I’ll say is this: timeless being does not change; there is nothing to change.
The Fear of Other People
I have touched on the fear of other people already, but this was so dominant for me that I want to look at it in more detail.
What are other people? What is another person? It seems an easy question on the surface. You could respond by saying other human beings are like myself, who, although similar in basic design, have subtle differences in body shape and intellectual abilities. Some people are older than you; some are younger. Some are richer and some are poorer.
Straightforward? No. So-called ‘other people’ act only as a stimulus to activate templates, mental characters or stereotypes constructed early on in our lives to make sense and protect an unstable feeling of selfhood. You never see a human being as they actually are; you are positioning yourself based on your best interpretation of them. You are attempting to read their mind and second-guess what they are capable of based on experiences from the past. Behind those closed doors of the factory other people are being assembled from parts and pieces of encounters in the past. What you are left with is a chimera constructed in a crude and very ad hoc fashion. You are Victor Frankenstein. Welcome to your monster.
Like Frankenstein’s monster, your creation does you no favours. It will not be restrained, and goes on the rampage. In a sense you are both in bondage—you and your creation. To create is to destroy. What is destroyed is the uncertainty and mystery of life itself. Notions of creation leave you in bondage and thinking you know what the world is and what is happening. You can’t know. You will never know. It’s not possible. Knowing is the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Ignorance is thinking you know; it isn’t the common-sense notion of being stupid.
A perceived successful and confident other person can activate the loser in you. Thought can establish scenario after scenario of what ‘their kind’ are like. You imagine the expensive restaurants they patronise, their political ideology and even the acrobatic sexual activities in which they most probably engage. Your thought factory turns out people faster than a milk bottle being filled in a dairy. Not only that, the current person under construction is recycled for another day where bits and pieces of the current character are used for someone else we meet, perhaps years later.
How grotesque.
The mind of a separate person is often suspicious of others and on guard. To be a person is to be vulnerable and frightened. Behaviour around others is often to protect and pre-empt a strike at the fragile structure we call ‘me’. To relax and just be is like having a defence budget of about £1.50. That’s not enough to protect you from attack. You might as well wave a white hanky even before you shake hands for the first time.
It does not have to be this way. You are not seeing anything as it actually is. You are living in fantasy. To think you know what anything is, and that includes other people, is at best inaccurate and worse—totally wrong. The whole notion of there being other people is a by-product of the internal structure established to defend and make sense of a world that comes with contraction and sense-making.
Let’s face it, if you are a shy and fearful person and are with a crowd of strangers you will automatically feel self-conscious. Imagine you are in a pub or a bar you haven’t been to before. It might be filled with lots
The Fear of Other People
I have touched on the fear of other people already, but this was so dominant for me that I want to look at it in more detail.
What are other people? What is another person? It seems an easy question on the surface. You could respond by saying other human beings are like myself, who, although similar in basic design, have subtle differences in body shape and intellectual abilities. Some people are older than you; some are younger. Some are richer and some are poorer.
Straightforward? No. So-called ‘other people’ act only as a stimulus to activate templates, mental characters or stereotypes constructed early on in our lives to make sense and protect an unstable feeling of selfhood. You never see a human being as they actually are; you are positioning yourself based on your best interpretation of them. You are attempting to read their mind and second-guess what they are capable of based on experiences from the past. Behind those closed doors of the factory other people are being assembled from parts and pieces of encounters in the past. What you are left with is a chimera constructed in a crude and very ad hoc fashion. You are Victor Frankenstein. Welcome to your monster.
Like Frankenstein’s monster, your creation does you no favours. It will not be restrained, and goes on the rampage. In a sense you are both in bondage—you and your creation. To create is to destroy. What is destroyed is the uncertainty and mystery of life itself. Notions of creation leave you in bondage and thinking you know what the world is and what is happening. You can’t know. You will never know. It’s not possible. Knowing is the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Ignorance is thinking you know; it isn’t the common-sense notion of being stupid.
A perceived successful and confident other person can activate the loser in you. Thought can establish scenario after scenario of what ‘their kind’ are like. You imagine the expensive restaurants they patronise, their political ideology and even the acrobatic sexual activities in which they most probably engage. Your thought factory turns out people faster than a milk bottle being filled in a dairy. Not only that, the current person under construction is recycled for another day where bits and pieces of the current character are used for someone else we meet, perhaps years later.
How grotesque.
The mind of a separate person is often suspicious of others and on guard. To be a person is to be vulnerable and frightened. Behaviour around others is often to protect and pre-empt a strike at the fragile structure we call ‘me’. To relax and just be is like having a defence budget of about £1.50. That’s not enough to protect you from attack. You might as well wave a white hanky even before you shake hands for the first time.
It does not have to be this way. You are not seeing anything as it actually is. You are living in fantasy. To think you know what anything is, and that includes other people, is at best inaccurate and worse—totally wrong. The whole notion of there being other people is a by-product of the internal structure established to defend and make sense of a world that comes with contraction and sense-making.
Let’s face it, if you are a shy and fearful person and are with a crowd of strangers you will automatically feel self-conscious. Imagine you are in a pub or a bar you haven’t been to before. It might be filled with lots
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