THE ROOM

I'm good at thinking outside the box, so much that you realize it's not a box to begin with.

will.i.am

Dark ... quiet ... peaceful ... but the awareness of an imminent transition gets stronger and stronger. There is in this darkness the knowledge and experience of a thousand lifetimes. Yet the longing for another chance to learn more about bottling the ego, controlling addictions, and getting closer to being a spirit of pure light helped make the decision to do another lifetime with a body. The importance of these physical existences for ones spiritual evolution cannot be overstated. How difficult, how frustrating and how painful these incarnations can be is clear, but the power of a mortal existence to indelibly imprint important spiritual attributes is even clearer.

Lucky, how really lucky to have been put at the front of the line to do an embodied existence on the beautiful planet called Earth. What will be experienced this time? Will the lessons that poverty has to teach be available, or will it be the even more challenging role of a wealthy person? What if bad choices are made? What if it's hard to even remember what lessons are to be learned? What if ... oooohhh, the pressure is getting intense. Wave after wave keeps pushing toward an imminent transition. Noise ... commotion ... light ... OWWW! A vicious slap on the butt and the transition is complete. Here at last – here at University Earth.

* * *

As a child is born into the world and comes into his mother's arms, it soon becomes evident that this sweet tiny creature has a definite personality that he seems to have brought with him. Those parents with more than one child know that children from the same genetic pool can have very definite differences in personality traits and attitudes. One child may be quiet and low maintenance except for his extreme stubbornness. Another may be the child that must always have her own way and later becomes someone who likes to be the boss of everything. Yet they all grew up in the same household with very similar upbringings. So there must be some sort of personality-defining energy, spirit or genetics that come with children on the day they are born. Some scientists believe that personality traits are passed genetically. With the huge amount of genetic material and all the possibilities for making proteins, we have discovered only a few over 25,000 peptides (small proteins) that appear to be encoded in our DNA. Perhaps some of these traits we seem to bring with us are passed in some way through this "unused" genetic material. Many religious beliefs and spiritual traditions include possibilities of pre-mortal existences or past lives (often referred to as incarnations). Some even believe that we have lived, or are living simultaneously, many lives and that we bring to each embodied existence all that we have learned from these earlier or concomitant periods of learning.

At the moment of birth the great forgetting begins, and all the knowledge and experience the new human being has brought with him begins to fade from memory. This great forgetting will make possible a much greater level of spiritual growth since only the strongest character traits will be likely to exert an influence on the new Earthling. If ego has been dealt with well in other existences, it will be an asset for the child as it starts on its path. If patience was never learned, it may cause problems in this existence and may even be the main reason for coming here this time. Any strengths achieved prior to this incarnation (a lifetime with a body) will be helpful during this one.

As the child grows, every experience, large or small, in some way affects what the child has brought with him to form a somewhat different child by the end of each day. What he experiences in his environment and his reactions to these experiences will create subtle changes from week to week. At any point in one's life, the totality of his experiences can be considered to be that person's "vector sum" (explained in the next paragraph). Thus a person can evolve in many different directions from any point in his life depending on what comes into his environment, what he experiences, and how he reacts to those experiences from that particular point on.

In physics we learn that a vector is a certain force acting in a particular direction. It was often explained using the horses and wagon image. If five horses are pulling a wagon directly north and three are pulling it directly east, the wagon will go approximately NNE at about a four-horse rate. In actuality, the wagon will probably break into many pieces and the horses will run off never to be seen again – but you learn that later in your physics class. There can be many vectors acting upon an object at any one time and the resulting course and force will be determined by mathematically finding the sum of all these vectors, i.e. – the vector sum.

Depending on our age, our lives have been acted upon by thousands to millions of forces pushing us in many directions. Our parents, families and societies create extremely strong vectors in directions mirroring our social environment. Religious organizations tend to create very powerful forces in our lives that can overpower many other forces. Our peers, especially our close friends, can often carry us further in the directions given to us by society and religion, or they can help create counter vectors in amazingly different directions. There are many points in our lives where a course of events will cause us to closely examine the place to which our own personal vector sum has brought us. Catastrophic events such as illness, significant loss, natural disasters or wars can change our evolutionary paths forever, but so can the accumulation of new insights, personal interactions, strong emotional experiences, and subtle chemical and energy influences.

Absolutism, as used in this book, is the existence of all-this-way-or-that-way thought processes that limit our range of experiences, insights or personal interactions by holding us within preconceived boundaries. These boundaries of thought and experience are usually created for us by other people in our environment: family members, friends, governing officials, religious leaders, schoolteachers and those who create our entertainment. Strangely enough, these people are usually only passing on that which was given to them. Rarely are these limiting ideas examined and even more rarely are they challenged before being handed down. These ideas are so deeply engrained that often we are not even sure it is an option to think otherwise, but we are very certain that we are very much discouraged from doing so. Many people are not even aware that they can control the influences that will shape their lives from the present moment onward. It is all fate or randomness. It is what we have been dealt by a God that doesn't always seem to care about our well-being.

But, instead of fate or randomness, it is most often the existence of these enslaving absolute thought processes that keeps us from changing our own lives and the direction the planet is going. It is clear that we can do nothing at this particular point in our lives to alter the vectors of the past that have created what we are at this moment. It is imperative, however, that we understand that we do have a part in choosing which vectors will be added to the sum to create what we are tomorrow at this time, a year from now, or a decade from now. Unfortunately, most people will continue to allow their lives to be formed by external controls, random events, and ideas and ways of thinking that are handed to them by people who may or may not have their best interests at heart. Ironically, it is often those who sincerely care about us the most who bind us with the mental shackles that are the most difficult to escape from.

Perhaps an easier explanation of what absolutism is would be to compare it to a room that has been built for us by other people. We are told that this room contains all that we need for a completely happy and fulfilling life. We sit in a large comfortable chair facing the door. There are windows to the right and to the left, but we are told not to look out of them as we may see something that could confuse us about why we need to stay in this room. There is a door in front of us, but we are told that we should not open that door and look out because there is an evil power (perhaps the boogeyman) waiting there to destroy us. There is a television in the corner with hundreds of channels, but we are admonished to watch only the videos left on top of the television for us – over and over again. On the wall is a framed poster with the title Tribal Rules. It enumerates what is allowed in this society and what is not acceptable. These rules contain phrases like "A real man does ...", "A woman's role is ...", "You will be laughed at and pointed at if you ...", and "We require a monetary contribution of ..."

The room is comfortable enough and, at first, we believe we can live happily in it forever. But occasionally boredom or curiosity overtakes us and we can't help looking out a window. What we see may be beautiful and fascinating or strange but irresistibly intriguing. We have been made to believe that we will be ridiculed if we let anyone know that we would like to explore that world. At first we get pangs of guilt and immediately turn our eyes back to the door. But each time we peer out the window and see the beauty and mystery outside, the guilt gets less and we linger at the view and turn back to face the door much more hesitantly.

As we mature and have more life experiences, we may begin to wonder what could be so scary outside that door, and we crack it open and take a quick look out. Although the boogeyman does not appear to be anywhere in sight, we begin to get nervous and fearful, saying to ourselves, "Oooooh, back to the chair, back to the chair." Eventually some of us will begin to doubt the boogeyman story altogether and will open the door and wander out a little bit. We may find the landscape in front of us to be beautiful and intriguing, but everyone knows that the monster we have been told about is lurking just out of sight and may grab us at any time. So we hurry back in and slam the door, imagining the monster nipping at our heels.

A rare few will eventually get fed up with watching the same videos, reading the same tribal rules, and not being allowed to ask any questions. They will throw open the door and exit the room with no intent to return.

In front of them lie many paths to strike out on, and it can be quite scary wondering where one will end up if one follows this path or that one. Fortunate are they that realize early on that all that is important is the journey. There is no path that will insure our happiness because, at the end of each day, the only place we can be is right where our day's journey has taken us. We think we must know a new path before embarking on it, but we actually create the path with each step we take. In other words, we need to pay attention to each moment in our lives and make the best choices we can and learn from every experience. By paying attention to each step, we gain control over where our paths take us. Even after we have left the room, absolutist thinking may take us on a journey right back into it. We must feel free to explore all directions and make course corrections at any point when we have gained new insights or experiences. Understanding this, it becomes very important to understand all the forces that can affect the direction of our journey.

* * *

The Buddha told a story called The Lost Son. A man who had lost his wife in childbirth lived in a village with his young son. The father had to go to another village on business, so he left his son with relatives. While he was gone, a band of thieves came and burned down the village and took the young boy with them. When the father returned he was horrified and heartbroken to find the burned out remains of his village. Upon finding the charred corpse of a young child, he assumed this was his son and began sobbing and yelling and blaming himself for leaving the boy behind. He arranged a cremation ceremony for the child and collected the ashes and kept them in a beautiful little bag that he always kept with him.

Sometime later the real son escaped from his captors and found his way home. He went to his father's new cottage late that night and knocked at the door. The father, who was still very distraught and sorrowful, answered, "Who is there?"

The young boy answered, "It's me, papa. It's your son. Open the door so I can come in." The father thought that this must be someone making fun of his constant grieving and he told the boy to go away because it wasn't funny. The boy tried several more times to get his father to let him in, but the man would not do it. Eventually the boy thought that this couldn't be his father, because his father would be very happy to see him and would let him in at once. He left and the father and his son never saw each other again.

The Buddha followed the story by telling his students, "There will be many times when you will take something to be the truth and feel that the evidence clearly supports you. But, if you hold on to it too tightly, when the truth shows up in person and knocks at your door, you will not open it."

* * *

If we want to have lives that are continuously evolving in upward directions, we cannot limit the sources that could take us to that better state of being. Having unalterable thought processes binds our minds with strong bands that won't even let us look at information that could expand our consciousness to realms of greater knowledge and joy. Sometimes we are not aware that another way of thinking about something is even an option. If we believe that anyone or any organization we respect or love would only give us the most beneficial concepts, we might feel forbidden to challenge ideas coming from these respected sources, which may not be for our greatest good. When we believe only what we are told to believe and fail to critically evaluate information from any source, we allow ourselves to be manipulated for the benefit of people who might consciously or unconsciously desire to control us. The people who truly care about us did not intentionally give us ideas they thought might limit our evolution, but they probably just passed on ideas that were taught to them by loved and respected people in their lives. Thought processes that are passed from generation to generation eventually become entrenched as genetic memory in a society. Just as we observe that nearly every human being has arms and hands, we find beliefs in every society that seem to be just as immutable and impossible to imagine in any other way.

What I would like to do with this book is introduce new ways of looking at some things that could give us greater joy and fulfillment. Most societies on the planet teach that there is no need to learn anything outside that society's teachings and values or examine other ways of thinking about our roles on the planet. In fact, in any larger society, there are many sub-societies that want us to accept their values as a part of that larger culture. Religions, families, ethnic cultures, gangs, and circles of friends are only a few of the sub-societies trying to impose their rules and ideas on us. It can be very frightening to look in directions that have been forbidden to us all our lives. It is usually much easier to stay on a path that is familiar to us than to look for a new road to travel, even though the currently traveled path is taking us nowhere. But the most difficult path to leave is the one that seems to be working for us as long as we follow all the rules of the road. We can even be blissfully happy in our currently occurring life while there exist ideas outside our rooms that could expand that bliss even more – if we could allow ourselves to go there.