As another bit of mythmaking, this metaphor is useful: I\u2019m but a cell on a finger-tip of God. We cells sort of know about the other cells that make up the skin, and there are other cells in the subcutaneous tissue, pressure receptors and such. Here the metaphor shifts over to the ranks of angels, each operating at deeper or higher levels. In the metaphor of fingertips and fingers and hands, other structure do things that support the skin cells\u2014the fingertip cells that are actually typing these letters and words.<\/p>\n
There are blood vessels and other kinds of tissue that \u201cwe skin cells\u201d sort of take for granted, not that we know much about them. Then there are blood cells and liquid that we hear gets pumped from some distant land, the \u201cheart\u201d\u2014so they tell us. I can\u2019t even imagine it. But that\u2019s not the bizarre part.<\/p>\n
You know I dance on the keys of the computer: It seems that \u201cI\u201ddo, and make them go down. I do this. But then it occurs to me that I don\u2019t know how I do this. I\u2019m informed by my guardian angel, the astral field, trying to explain, that there are these things called muscles that push the bones down. I don\u2019t know what bones are! But they tell me that this is so. Okay, smarty pants, but how do they know which button to push, huh? They know because the muscles are coordinated by the brain and the nerves. Like I, a perfectly normal, intelligent skin cell could begin to begin to know about those! Fairy tales! Exclamations of disbelief!<\/p>\n
Because the guardian angel of the astral field inspired me, I was led to withhold my inclination to mock and try to understand, and I do what they tell me. I tried. She said it had to do with it being less in control than I thought I was. \u201cWhat?!\u201d<\/p>\n
I exclaimed that clearly it was I\u2014\u201cme\u201d\u2014pushing the keys. She patiently showed me that, yes, I did have a part to play in the dynamic, but in fact 98% of the \u201cdoing\u201d was from on high, the subcutaneous tissues, the structures beyond my familiar surroundings.<\/p>\n
Wow: It\u2019s not just the skin cells, but all of the skin, and the deeper structures too! This includes bone cells, muscles, nerves that give feedback and nerves connected to muscles. Ligaments and tendons, too. They\u2019re all innervated by nerves that carry messages form a brain far away.<\/p>\n
Now one of the points here is, as I said, it seems that I\u2019m doing it, and higher wisdom is hinting that lots of others are doing a lot of other processes that contribute to the overall process. Meanwhile, they let me think I\u2019m doing it because it seems that way to me. A deep part of me is hinting in ways that suggests that it\u2019s really my doing! Sure it\u2019s my unconscious, and habit, but I can be rightly given the credit for that. Yet another part says, \u201cseems\u201d is not an automatic conclusion. I was helped in this realization by reflecting on how dreams seem real at the time, and then awakened consciousness seems pretty real for a longer time. <\/p>\n
But I know that consciousness itself can be fooled, and more than when I was younger I have a dim sense howl. But it\u2019s like the reality that I think is awake, which, compared to the reality of dreams, well, it seems really real. So there.<\/p>\n
But then maybe it isn\u2019t much more real than dreams. It is more real, no question, but how much more? There are some deep spiritual teachers that suggest that this everyday reality, while more real than the dream reality, isn\u2019t all that real, all that out front. The illusion that there\u2019s an \u201cI\u201d who does it is absolutely the most real thing\u2014well, maybe not! Yet it\u2019s technically almost inconceivable that there\u2019s more, but then again, that\u2019s what they said to Galileo.<\/p>\n
On a transcendental level the acknowledgment of history suggests an analogy. What if we\u2019re locked into the \u201cmagical\u201d paradigm of the illusion of ego, that it\u2019s really me doing me?<\/p>\n
And I\u2019ve sorta-kinda realized that I am really 90% all these other parts, muscles, bones, and nerves, and behind them heart and brain, and I hardly know what to make of them. But on reflection, I just get a hint that (1) it really seems that I\u2019m doing it; and (2) that for a guy who\u2019s in charge, in fact I don\u2019t know all that much about what \u201cI\u201d am or what I\u2019m \u201cdoing.\u201d Could it be that this, too, is illusion, just as in dreams?<\/p>\n
Well, what if that\u2019s really dreams are for, in part: to let you know that conscious-ness can dream and be involved in daydream, fantasy, play, fiction, supposing, myth, and\u2014really rather thinly\u2013 reality testing. We do reality-test, but then we get sucked into the illusion that double checking is really quite enough\u2014and no way is it, really. <\/p>\n
What if the nature of human evolution is that it\u2019s taken us thousands of years to live long enough to begin to discriminate between myth and fact, and to systematically test fact, and in fact we\u2019re only beginning to do that rather widely? Again and again we get sucked in. It\u2019s like growing up. We get to an age when we can compare ourselves and we think that compared to what we used to know, as kids, as people who don\u2019t know about airplanes, we are pretty good. In fact we don\u2019t really know how airplanes work either, not most of us, but a few of us do and we take credit. It seems\u2014the operative word is \u201cseems\u201d\u2014sufficient. We take credit.<\/p>\n
Yeah, our team won, so we won. We didn\u2019t even play the game, but those guys for whom we rooted, they won, so it seems as if we won. Is this what Plato meant by the parable that we sorta kinda live in a cave and take the pictures projected on the wall of the cave to be reality? <\/p>\n
But if I reflect, ah, that\u2019s not easy to do, if I reflect: So many kinds of meditation are being touted as the answer, so it\u2019s not that weird to think about thinking and illusion. With a little reflection it becomes apparent that I\u2019m really hardly \u201cin control\u201d of my thoughts or senses. It\u2019s a little spooky. I see now that it\u2019s what the deep mind wants, and it\u2019s helped by all sorts of habits, routines, and the limitations of muscles, joints, etc. It seems so much that it\u2019s \u201cme\u201d doing me, but it\u2019s 90% or more \u201cthem.\u201d What the hey!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As another bit of mythmaking, this metaphor is useful: I\u2019m but a cell on a finger-tip of God. We cells sort of know about the other cells that make up the skin, and there are other cells in the subcutaneous tissue, pressure receptors and such. Here the metaphor shifts over to the ranks of angels, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,13,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiographical","category-spirituality-and-philosophy","category-wisdom-ing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2060"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2060"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2061,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2060\/revisions\/2061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}