SOCKPUPPET DRAMA

While shopping today, I heard an interaction between a woman and her daughter.

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The need for love is manifested in the body. It NEEDS love the way it needs food, water and protection from the elements. Our bodies suffer from lack of love -- from criticism, judgment, neglect. In our culture, the body is seen as the carrier of our minds, our emotions, our thoughts rather than as PART of those same functions. We feel in our bodies -- emotions and sensations -- just as we feel those things in our heads. Our head is part of our body -- our body is part of our head. There are neuroreceptors in many parts of our body, not just within our mind/head.

My suffering will never minimize the suffering of another. Likewise, I can never suffer for another. My suffering serves no purpose. Most (if not all) of my suffering is voluntary.

If I feel joy at seeing the joy of another, then I create more joy. If I experience suffering at seeing the suffering of another, then I create more suffering.

Compassion is not suffering, it is the antidote for suffering. Tears do not necessarily express suffering, though we are conditioned to believe that they do, thus our cultural fear of them, our repression. The limbic system is right behind the sinuses -- when it pumps out a big !gush! of compassion/empathy/interconnectedness/nonduality it activates these tissues. Thus, the tears -- they are nigh involuntary when this is felt strongly, or rather when there is a critical amount of these neurochemicals present. Some have more sensitive tissues than others; some cry more readily than others; some have more receptors than others.

What crazy socialized messages -- crying = weakness. Um, what? I'm "weak" for having more oxytocin receptors? For responding to my body's expression of compassion/empathy/interconnectedness/nonduality? This is like guilt over orgasm….

…. more or less exactly like that, only with some more chemicals added to it. Oh, the Victorians…. so afraid of their minds, so afraid of their chemistry, so afraid they would return to the days of knuckledraggingmonkeys if they allowed their brains free range.

Nope, can't think that thought -- some invisible force named "culture" deemed that that thought should (they deemed that word too) be tossed into the "bad" pile -- it's evil, donchaknow…. or is at least a gateway thought toward evil.

And what is evil in this culture my friends? The highest form of evil as taught by the culturally generally approved "authority" on morality? What? Disobedience? It is disobedience that caused The Great Fall, that cast down light into infinite darkness, that created the very threat of which we are all supposed (that word too) to fear? Eternal damnation… for disobedience? For questioning? For not submitting?

Um, yeah, whatever. This is not a principle to which I am willing to bow. And oh yes, believe me, I've done my share of prostrations, but not to a principle like this. Sorry folks, but that is not a heaven to which I would wish to go… would have a hard time, really, calling it heaven….

Hey! You there… the one THINKING. Knock it off, or you're out-o-here. You remember what they did to the LAST guy who was disobedient…..

Bleh. Disobedient. Fuck you, I'll SHOW YOU disobedient…..

Thus, a great part of my life. What kind of freedom is that? It isn't freedom at all, but rather the reactionary response to the same principle, only now instead of obeying it I am rebelling against it, thus it is still in control of me.

Tricky, tricky, tricky…..

Ok, here's the dichotomy -- you can either be on MY side, or HIS side. Which one do you choose? You're "free" to choose either. No choice? Oop -- you're either for me or against me, so which will it be? Come on, quick -=- what's the lesser of the two evils? (tickticktick) !!Quick!! Time's running out! If you don't pick ME I'll do TERRIBLE THINGS to you! It's your choice… come one come on come on. Time's up!

Dude, no thanks. I mean, that's just a really trite and clichéd plot -- circular drama. Tell you what -- you go do your "dichotomous" thing over there, and I'll go do my "nondichotomous" thing over here and, maybe some day, I'll check back and see how your story all turned out…. or not. Once one stops watching the soap opera, one can always go back and turn it back on and pretty immediately figure out who's screwing whom now and pick back up with getting sucked in. ( ) It's neverending conflict though once one realizes that one is free to just turn away and do something else, well, then, that's when the real choice comes into play.

Choose a side? There are no sides. Ever. This is just a construct created to keep us busy, to keep us suffering, to keep us obedient to an idea we carry around in our heads. The irony is that the oppressor suffers in equal proportion to the oppressed -- they are just unfree in a different way.

When we are trapped within our own minds we are the greatest prisoners of all. Tiny cells, experience locked away, believing the stories of our own intrinsic "evil" nature. We avoid our own experiences, our own chemistry, our own brains/bodies because we've been conditioned to believe that they are the gateway to unbearable unmitigated unfinite suffering so we deny them, disown them, neglect them. Rarely do we accept them; even more rarely to do we love them.

Gee… can't imagine why so many people in our culture are so unhappy. (Does this sound familiar? You have EVERYTHING -- what are YOU whining about. Spoiled brat.) We are both abusers and abused, perpetrators and victims, playing out the dramas of suffering within and amongst our selves.

The good news? We don't have to. Seriously -- you're free to stop any time. Not that quitting is easy -- samsara is more addictive than heroine, more addictive than TV. It is so addictive because you think it is real, that to even think about setting it down is… unthinkable. Suffering/conflict/duality? Just… set it down? Coldturkey? Shouldn't I go to a clinic somewhere and get little plasticcups of dilated samsara once in a while, just so I don't get…. twitchy? Bored?

Don't let Them fool you, my friend -- bliss is never boring.

In our culture, Mara has twodichotomoussockpupptes. Sometimes they are called god/devil, others good/evil. Should/shouldn't, deserve/notdeserve, and all of their allied affiliates and derivations. They are given power by the concepts such as "have to" and "must" under the authority of "dire consequences."

We carry around the words of oppression, using them every day upon ourselves, demanding and imposing our own obedience, and then we wonder why we do not feel free. We are our own oppressors -- we enslave ourselves to concepts, imprison ourselves in conditioned linguistic patterns.

Of course this means that each of us has a key. The good news is, we really are free.