Heavenletters

I had the idea of using the "add new comment" function so no one can accuse us of writing comments that are long and thin. This way they'll be short and compact. Ingenious, huh.

I love everything you write. And I love to see how two people who are as different as you and I can still enjoy a conversation. Or perhaps I'm just older but the same otherwise. I noticed that, over the years, what I have to say tends to get more and more personal and direct. I know I can trust my intellect, and I find it gives me pleasure to venture beyond it, to say things simply because I feel them, not caring so much whether they are intellectually watertight or not. I'm finding more and more that there are things that are emotionally and spiritually watertight and can be stated in very simple terms and turn out to be intellectually satisfying as well for me.

What you said about "choice" is accurate, of course. And yet I almost hate the word. It's a trauma for me. What if you're not dumb or anything but still find yourself unable to choose more wisely? For me, there is a crucially important ingredient missing in the whole New-Age discourse on choosing and choice, and it is love and true understanding. I'm not accusing you of New-Age talk, but I will always question a sentence like this one: "... once we are aware of the Truth about who we are, we realize that our empowerment or our disempowerment becomes a matter of our choice." No doubt, this is so. But when are we aware of that Truth? When we've heard about it? When we've thought about it? When we've deeply meditated about it for a couple of decades? You know the answer, of course.

In short, to anything anyone says about "choice" (or whatever), even God in Heavenletters, if it's not my experience, I will always say, "No, that's not been my experience. Please note that I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm only trying to avoid talking myself into believing I'm believing things I'm not actually believing." I have done that and it hurts. I see others doing it, and it probably hurts them as well. So if I say, "Sorry, that's not been my experience", perhaps others who are in a similar situation get the idea of simply staying true to their heart.

And about paradigms. I'm not inclined to discuss them very much any more. Once you start feeling the wind blowing through you, once you start getting glimpses of how you and everything else isn't there the way you thought it was, then real and unreal start blending into each other as in a fairy tale. Reality is a hologram. Insubstantial but totally real. The man in your dream stubbing his toe on the leg of a table and going "Ouch!" is the same as your "really" hurting stubbed toe out here in so-called waking reality. And the past? There is no past. All your memories arise presently. There is no "real" past behind them. There is no "real" past behind your old photos. They arise presently. And so on.

Yes, I love everything you write, dear Chuck. There is something refreshing about it. The years are making me more and more nonchalant about many of these things, but you don't take my words as being arrogant, do you?