It is critical that we study and learn about the nature of human experience, in order to ensure the future of human freedom.
We may begin by studying how we can, and cannot trust experience. For what it reveals is very, very interesting.
On the one hand, it is profound wisdom to mistrust our experience: our experience is in some sense an illusion, a construction of the brain, and we do not want to be fooled by it.
That birdsong is not a birdsong, that table is not a table, what is in front of you right now is not what it appears to be: in each case it is a complex vibratory pattern that we have labeled as such (as "birdsong", as "table", etc.), that we have constructed an experience on top of. The reality is so much more than the experienced structure of what we have been taught to consider “real”.
This may seem trivial or abstract until we place it into a larger context.
Your child is not your child. You are not the constructed self you have been taught to see yourself as.
You are so much more than the experienced structure of what you appear to be, that you have been taught to filter yourself through, and experience yourself as.
And so is your child. What happens when we hold our children in this freshness, when we give them that gift, and when we raise them remembering that in our hearts? Does it reinforce the possibility inside of them that they can live from this truth all of the time, so that this becomes a little easier for the next generation than it was for us?
War is not war. It is a complex vibratory pattern that we have labeled as such, and our participation in it at the level of consciousness maintains its' sense of “realness”. Can we see this?
This is not to turn a blind eye to social conditions, nor is it to fail to act when action is wisdom: it is to recognize that our complicity at the level of consciousness with the illusion of war helps to maintain it. War is a set on the theatre of human experience. We may, in fact, recycle the theatre set, and the end of war starts there.
You may imagine the raw lumber mined from this old set being used to build a new one.
What do we wish to create?
So we must learn to mistrust our experience, so we do not become fooled by it.
On the other hand, it is essential wisdom in the modern age to learn to trust our experience, for what it does offer:
A tool by which to make sense of the world, especially in a time when we have been taught to mistrust our own experience to the point of giving away our power to outside authorities. These authorities can literally tell us what theatre set to walk into, live in, and adopt as real, but only if we allow them...