Who’s Running Your Life?

Who’s running your life?
Or rather, what’s running your life?

We may think it’s governments, corporations, secret societies … but what’s running them?
They may think that they are the rulers of the galaxy – but it couldn’t be further from the truth. 🙂

The simple gross laws of the infinite universe (attraction, repulsion and inertia) aren’t a joke or a simulation being played; it’s just how things are in an infinite universe. All we have to do is observe.

It’s likes, dislikes and indifferences that are running our life. We think this is natural and that it’s always been this way. It isn’t and it hasn’t. This belief is bound to the physical and mental world by stories that twist the truth to confuse conscious beings and promote the creation of a self identity. Stories are our programming.

The solution is to realise that that which notes this illusion is consciousness: pure, compassionate consciousness. This is our reality. ‘Pure’ may be called emptiness, shunyata, God, dzogchen, tao, zen, mahamudra, turiya, or uncontaminated awareness …

Here’s the twist in the story:
Consciousness is the natural state of mind – emptiness – but we fill it with attraction, desire, memories and stories.
Being full of concepts, we start judging: this creates our dislikes, repulsions and fears.
Because of dislikes, we forfeit compassion, ignoring our and others’ true reality of pure consciousness.

This gross relative reality of ignoring our true reality creates a separate self, which is the cause of suffering.

Those who think that they run the world suffer from intense likes and dislikes, and see to it that the rest of us stay locked in obsessions, while they believe they’re immune. These beings are the ‘gods’ who deliberately misinform so that we stay as semi-gods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell beings.

All the while we have been enlightened beings
who learnt to forget what we are.

The ‘six realms’ refers to the six realms of existence in Buddhist cosmology, into which beings can be reborn, based on their karma.

Cosmology: from Greek kosmos ‘order’ or ‘world’.

God realm (Deva): beings who experience temporary pleasure which breeds arrogance.

Semi-god realm (Asura): also known as the jealous god realm, these beings are powerful but constantly engage in conflict due to jealousy.

Human realm (Manusha): a realm with a balance of pleasure and pain, considered a unique opportunity for enlightenment because it is a middle ground between the extreme suffering of the lower realms and the extreme pleasure of the higher realms.

Animal realm (Tiryak): this realm is characterised by a lack of humour.

Hungry Ghost realm (Preta): beings in this realm suffer from insatiable hunger and thirst due to greed.

Hell realm (Naraka): the realm of extreme suffering caused by hatred and negative actions.

Our problem is that we become so involved with knowing about the six realms (as we do with all information) that we don’t actually experience them – they merely become yet another kind of programming.

We experience them when emotions arise and we see what we’ve been doing and living by. That first instant of recognition is wisdom – that’s if we let go of our pride.

This is the practice of eliminating karma, and the path to realising enlightenment.