To Think The Unthinkable
By Fredalupe!
Delving deeply into the challenge this paradoxical puzzle presents the thinking mind, the answering of which necessarily leading one’s own attention to a suspension of the very thing with which one attempts to do the answering, akin to trying to catch one’s own reflection without the use of a mirrored surface, one illuminates much of the nature of consciousness, its workings, limitations, its perforce power, potential and otherwise.
And if that first sentence above doesn’t give you an idea of how head-twistingly labyrinthine such a plunge into the void can be, perhaps it can still offer a glimpse into the necessity of going beyond language to arrive at something greater than mere description. As Lao-Tzu put it “Stop thinking, and end your problems.” A delightful and truthfully useful technique, coupled with the essential self-observation that brings us here, both are certainly worth the mention, the underlining, and most definitely the practice and experience, liberating as they most certainly are.
Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity of self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening. ~ G. I. Gurdjieff
I have to add another quote by the same author to illustrate the very real position I’m presently leaping from to do this subject justice, to possibly inspire both you, gentle reader and myself, and to move beyond that same void into the realm of articulating any practical possibility inherent in such a sluice, to whatever golden treasures remains thereafter. For our purposes, the challenge of thinking the unthinkable remains.
Awakening begins when a man realizes that he is going nowhere and does not know where to go.
~ G. I. Gurdjieff
This is a fine place to truly begin. This realization that we are exactly where we need to be, surrounded by exactly what we require to evolve. Knowing we simply don’t know as yet what is to come; that now, in fact, we are very much in the unknown, mystery everywhere, permeating everything, with nothing taken for granted, all of which grants an essential absence of self concern that allows for a particular freedom to occur within us. This priceless perception, this fundamental feeling, one that harmonizes with the genuine freedom that abounds in the natural world, that is Nature, limitless and life giving, that is our clearest reflection, our greatest source of knowledge, of nourishment, our doorway into the infinite.
“Only if one loves this earth with unbending passion can one relieve one’s sadness,” don Juan said. “Warriors are always joyful because their love is unalterable and their beloved, the earth, embraces them and bestows upon them inconceivable gifts. The sadness belongs only to those who hate the very thing that gives shelter to their beings.” Don Juan again caressed the ground with tenderness. “This lovely being, which is alive to its last recesses and understands every feeling, soothed me, it cured me of my pains, and finally when I had fully understood my love for it, it taught me freedom.” ~ Carlos Castaneda
And yet here we also are, in this weird world of separateness, of selfishness, of hardship, danger and difficulty. In it surely, but of it…well, that’s up to us, ideally. Yet it would be the height of foolishness to deny the presence of the predators in our midst, the deceivers, those that wish us harm, that fester in our ignorance, gnawing at the root of our being, mocking us in our endless folly.
Do not be afraid of your difficulties. Do not wish you could be in other circumstances than you are. For when you have made the best of an adversity, it becomes the stepping-stone to a splendid opportunity.
~ H. P. Blavatsky
I can neither deny that this is so, nor that I have decried it. Too long spent crying about that which is in actuality a gift and there to potentially delight in. Too long lost in self-pity, sadness and blame. All part of the Journey. All part of the Show. Sentence fragments aside, let it be said and known that the only thing more difficult than evolving is not evolving. My life’s experience and that of those around me are testament to this undeniable truth.
That humanity still exists, still loves, still cares for its young, still attempts to build a better tomorrow, regardless of the hell from whence we come or the nightmare to which so many continue to march towards, still we are here, defiant, triumphant. Our happy destiny is unavoidable. Our task is clear, it is one to which we are more than equal. The situation, though dire and fraught with horror and sickness, is not beyond our means to heal, to cure, with joy and health, beauty and genius.
“We must start to think the unthinkable. Now is the time to start. Thinking the unthinkable is the kind of challenge that can be fun, can be rewarding and it can be an opportunity, first of all, for you to have a clear understanding of how you don’t want to think the unthinkable.
You have your pet words, ideas, explanations, answers to life. All these are marvelously thinkable to you. You can just use them freely, easily, no effort, or work on your part at all. All you have to do is just let go and do the easy thing that comes to you. Repeat the same clichés, same defenses, same complaints against life. All you have to do is be who you have always been. That’s the choice of the mindless masses.
To think the unthinkable is to go against the easy, comfortable, seemingly comfortable way, because when you refuse to think in a new higher way, and remain in the depths of your habitual ways, when you remain there, there is always suffering.” ~Vernon Howard’s Higher World
Here we have it, the answer, the challenge, a way to work with a seemingly impossible suggestion, something we might grasp and ponder, a plan, a guide of sorts, open-ended as it must needs be. Our habits, our ridiculous fear-based egos, lunatic with unwarranted self importance, narcissistic and psychopathic, all of it presently calcified into what is called a civilization, more necropolis than a living thing, a culture gone bad, overgrown with cancers of the spirit, of the body, of the mind, debased and degenerate, all of it a twisted version of what could be, what once was heaven itself. Mankind is hardly kind. Humanity has chosen, is choosing still to ‘honour’ a fraudulent contract in which all are tricked into believing is reality. Break your agreement! Defy the lie. Dare to go your own way. Encourage where there is fear. Love where there is hate. Rise up and shrug off those bottom feeders, that insist that you too must join them in their dark carnival of survival. Make Art of your every action. The answer, the cure, we have it, we are it. Our joy is to embody the very bloom of life, our imaginations flowering into forever. And as the seeds of the new are found in the shell of the old, so too are we to eventually cast off these chains, this imposed, antiquated and frankly alien paradigm presently consuming and distorting our Natural Being, stealing away our true heritage, our power, our magic. But remember to be grateful for the opportunity, for the sacrifice of those without whom we might not have had that very opportunity to become free, of and from, possibly beyond duality itself.
Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habit. ~ Lao Tzu
Good instructions. Simple and to the point. Ancient and fun. Powerful and true. Often quoted, rarely practiced. Many have come before to articulate their path as an example. Most have been obscured and at times entirely disfigured behind habitual and complicit ignorance, selfishness and artificiality. Anything and everything to get in the way of our Journey, interrupting and high-jacking our connection to Source, our consciousness, to keep us prisoners of our own fear, feeding on our awareness, trapped by it’s lack. You just got to love it, and use it to know yourself as what you are not, to choose of your own free will what next you will be and bloom.
Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream. ~ Lao Tzu
A necessary gravity, the opponents of and to our evolution work tirelessly to interrupt our natural progression, using and subverting those very thoughts, words and deeds into a puppeteering of their own mad dreams of anti-life. They will continue to do so until such time as we are done with this most excoriating experience. And so I invite you to begin your own apocalypse, your own uncovering, your own individual expression inspired by that very action, the freeing of oneself from what one is not.
Remember that new beginnings are often disguised as painful endings, and that the ‘All of Everything’, Source, Nature, never gives a task to which one is unequal. The real challenge is to imagine and hence become our greatest selves, our finest being, and our truest love; to act in that grandeur as its perfect representatives, Agents of Change, Heroes of kindness, Champions of Life, unafraid to be true, daring to not merely come out of the box, out of the closet, or out of the coop, but choosing to think the unthinkable, daring to be free, to even become Freedom incarnate in action.
