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By Neal
A thought came to me today. When the white man came to America, the native people did not understand the idea of owning land. They felt that the land belonged to the earth and they were grateful to be on it for a while. The idea was strange to them that someone could claim it for themselves when there were people, animals, plants and so many creatures living on it. They saw it as something to be shared, not something that could be owned. Because of this the white man was able to take a lot of land from the native Americans for small amounts of money. This is why Manhattan Island could be bought for 21 dollars worth of beads or William Penn’s Sons could take 1,200,000 from the Lenape Indians in their Walking Purchase for token gifts of beads.
To the native people, they thought that they were just getting an offering of appreciation for sharing the land for hunting, planting and building some houses.
It came as a big surprise to the native people that after allowing this, the white people forced them to leave the land. The term Indian giver was coined because the Indians didn’t think they had to leave the land. To the white people they bought the land, it was legally theirs and the Indians refused to leave but to the Indians there was no concept of anyone owning the land, it belonged to the earth to be shared. Since the native people eventually wouldn’t leave, the white man began to violently drive them off the land.
Fast forward to today and people have been fighting and dying over land boundaries for centuries and still now in Gaza, the West Bank and Ukraine. In the end, when all people disappear from the earth, all these boundaries that people fought and died for, took pride in and had allegiance to will disappear and the earth will just be the earth.
We can make the same parallel to our minds. In reality we are the consciousness of creation—the awareness that permeates all existence. We cannot claim it as our own, it is just here, always was here and always will be here. We are only experiencing it as we are, for a relatively short time. This consciousness is the one consciousness that belongs to everyone and to all life just as every parcel of land belongs to the whole earth.
In the same way that we section off parcels of land and say this is mine, and use it according to our desires, landscaping it in our way, and limiting who we share it with; we do the same with this universe-given consciousness. We call it our own, we bend it to create a life according to our will and treat that life as if it is our possession. Drawing a border around it to create a mind and life that we can call mine, separate from all else. We restrict it to those that we consider close to us or helpful to us.
Like land boundaries this requires a lot of effort to maintain. We are constantly judging the value of ourselves against others. Judging our situation against what we think it should be. Trying to improve and add to the value of our mental property. Basically being in a state of unrest, which only leads to anxieties, depressions and delusional feelings and thoughts about ourselves, usually negative. Worse than that it confines our consciousness, which could be used for so much more joyful things.
Spending our lives living only for this separate piece of consciousness we call ourselves, we might think of God or the creative force of the universe as an Indian giver. Ultimately this consciousness that we hold as our own possession disappears. The boundaries we built and all the work we put into bending it to our own will and desires dissolves when our body and the mind that created it disappear. But the original consciousness remains without our self-made borders and limitations just as the earth will remain once man’s borders no longer exist.
What if the white man accepted the idea of the land not belonging to anyone and shared it with the native Americans. It would have saved a lot of bloodshed and suffering and we would have had a richer culture, embracing wider views of life and the world. Even today, people would use the land as needed without the burden of possessing it. Most likely we would build smaller, less permanent houses and not get so caught up in the pursuit of wealth but rather in the joy of sharing. Surveyors and real estate lawyers would not be needed.
In that same way if we did not section off our consciousness and call it our own. If we did not see it as separate, we wouldn’t have to constantly try to defend and embellish its acceptability to others, the surveyors, lawyers and wars in our minds would not be needed. The mind that is dedicated to maintaining that little piece of consciousness we call me can be freed from that task.. We would no longer have to defend ourselves, draw boundaries or have enemies. We would no longer see the world and people as how they relate to me but see them just as they are without such a narrow focus. We could have a wider and richer consciousness, accepting of others, because we would realize that we are all sharing one consciousness. Not that it wouldn’t vary from person to person but we would be aware that regardless of our differences, the original foundation is the same in all. We could delight in insights that dissolve our boundaries and stretch the way we see things, instead of resisting and fighting against them. We could accept ourselves and others better because instead of measuring ourselves against others we would realize that we all have our unique position and function in the whole. So much wasted energy and consciousness could be saved. Just as lives are lost when we fight wars over land boundaries, consciousness is lost in fighting for our mental boundaries. This is no less tragic because when you get down to it what is life but consciousness.
Without boundaries, as a piece of land just becomes what it is, the earth, our consciousness just becomes what it is, the consciousness of the universe. When we live as that, not holding on to self-imposed boundaries, we can share freely with others. We would find that when we share that consciousness, it is the most valuable thing we can give to each other. Finding that it is a joy to give it to others and a joy to receive it back, and the more we give it the more we receive it.
When the body disappears, we still go on as the consciousness that is the eternal creative force of the universe. Having freed our consciousness from its boundaries and self-centered attachments and fears we can already live as the eternal consciousness, while we are alive. There is then no longer any fear or pain anticipating death, the dissolving of those boundaries because they have already been willingly taken down. We can already experience this true eternal life without self made boundaries, a life that is no longer tied to them.
Just as the earth will just be the earth when the man-made boundaries disappear, our consciousness will remain the one consciousness when our self-made boundaries disappear. We can begin to experience it now – while we are alive – the more we turn our attention away from our constant self-centered struggles and just appreciate being. That unattached, undefined, un-longing consciousness is our true being. Why not get acquainted with that reality and its benefits now instead of fighting and worrying over boundaries that don’t really exist?
There are many types of meditation and they are all useful in helping to stop our minds so that we can relax and begin to see things from a more realistic perspective, free from the workings of our minds. The particular type of meditation I do and we do at OME is unique, however, because it is a systematic way of exposing these self-made boundaries that we created so that we can eliminate them one-by-one. Observing these boundaries in our minds we can see how we created them and that they have no real substance or value. As we free ourselves from the attachment to these boundaries we begin to experience more and more our true mind, which is in fact that universal mind that we all share.
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