Link to this post - https://www.paulcheksblog.com/?p=3435
June 10, 2011

DOES FEAR OF DEATH = FEAR OF LIFE? (Part 3. The Human Experience)

Hello and it’s Friday!!

I hope you’ve been enjoying this series.

Any dialogue on issues of GOD, God or god is likely to churn up all sorts of emotions and their related opinions in people. I hope everyone is clear that my posts are not dictations, they are connotations based on my own experiences.

What I really want to say, can’t be said, only experienced. Therefore, as the Buddhist monks often say, don’t look at the finger pointing at the moon, look at the moon.

Many people are quick and hot to debate my finger, or any other teacher’s finger well before they’ve even turned their head to have a look at the moon; acquire an authentic experience of the teachings by simply trying them.

I personally enjoy sharing the many ways I’ve learned to ease my own pain, which in my own life has come largely by way of not understanding.

When I’ve come to understand an issue to the degree it eases me, naturally, like most people, out of love there is a genuine desire to share so others may have other options they may not have been previously aware of.

I had a very busy, productive day yesterday. My webinar titled Essentials of Program Design went very well once we got over some technological hurdles.

I get great joy knowing that I can help trainers do their work more effectively because I know every trainer I assist will pass their new-found knowledge on to their clients. Any way I can help others make better choices so they can more effectively live their dreams is love to me. That’s what’s kept me in this profession as long as it has.

Today, after writing this blog, breakfast, taking Vidya to get her car fixed and a workout, I’ll go for a massage and a steam. Then I will go home and spend some time working on revisions for the next printing of my book How To Eat, Move and Be Healthy! and related projects.

Then, after dinner, I hope to watch a movie with Penny and Vidya; translated, that means maybe after dinner I’ll be rubbing heads and feet ☺.

Today, I’ll finish this series with my own understanding, experience and intuitions of the human experience. I hope you enjoy what I share.

Part 3. The Human Experience

In my diagram, you see “GOD = POWER STATION”. Remembering the distinction that “GOD” = ABSOLUTE that I shared previously in my post yesterday, THE ABSOLUTE has only 2 essential qualities: ABSOLUTELY NO-THING and ABSOLUTELY EVERY-THING.

I shared that NO-THING is best exemplified by light and gave the rationale that photons are essentially empty (research bosons in quantum physics for a deeper explanation), but (virtually) real. They are things that aren’t things.

I also shared that EVERY-THING represents everything that is “something”; embodiment = matter = mass. This reality is expressed in the tai-chi symbol as light (white) meeting dark (black).

I also shared that neither reality, nor any conceivable reality can be conceived as this or that without ego-mind’s function of negating.

In the tai-chi symbol, one sees the seed of yin in yang, and the seed of yang in yin. This means that light has nothing to become but dark (matter or something), and yin has nothing to become but light – no-thing.

I shared that the process of THE EMPTY meeting THE FULL creates vibration, movement, time, matter (body), existence, and life.

I explained how ether, according to past and current scientific investigations is believed by some scientists and metaphysicians to exemplify the first, most elementary or base expression of unbound space as relational, or, “conditioned space.”

I shared that the zero point field has immeasurable (inexhaustible) energy potential. I also shared a basic law of thermodynamics that essentially states that energy produced cannot be destroyed, only transformed.

Just as water can’t escape the earth and it’s atmosphere, creating a closed cycle called the hydrological cycle, energy produced in GOD (the entire Universe!) has nowhere to go! GOD is UBIQUITOUS.

Therefore, Existence (Life) is truly SELF (ALL) expression. It is the function of ego-mind to label and judge existence as this or that.

My diagram is a simple tool I created to try and clarify GOD. EVERY-THING (the Universe – One Song) exemplifies ALL THAT IS. Yet, we know by looking around that everything that “is something” can only be differentiated as “something” because there is emptiness – space between this thing and that thing.

Yet, as the tai-chi symbol shows, this thing is becoming that thing and that thing is becoming this thing – emerging and dissolving – all flowing in harmony.

This reality is exemplified beautifully in a Buddhist teaching story, which I’ll relate here:

A student asked a monk, “Master, what is Buddha?” The Master replied, “Shit on a stick!”

I’ve just shared an essential meditation with you. Once one understands this, peace can emerge and the issues of the world reflect the process of growth, harvest, composting becoming growth, harvest and composting ad-infinitum.

If for no other reason than my love of The Garden (Earth), I love and care for my body so that when I’m done with it, I’ll make some good shit!

Hopefully my corpse will help cultivate some nutritious food for all that eat me. In our own way, we each love to be eaten ☺.

Just as everything electrical that is plugged into a wall socket is directly connected to the power station (or source), we are all a-live, which means that we are gaining energy for our aliveness from THE SOURCE.

Just as scientists can’t say with any absolute assurance what an electron is, yet we use them in our lives every day, no one can say with absolute assurance what GOD is, yet we express GOD every day, just as a hair dryer expresses it’s mode of being via an as yet undefined energy source called electrons.

My diagram exemplifies this reality.

We could choose to name each of the three streetlights shown as Peter, Paul and Mary. They each stand out as individuals in the dark. You can see their spot on the ground. They are each distinct, yet their illumination merges and looses distinction in the space between them.

In relationship, there is no relationship of we don’t give something of ourselves to the other and vice-versa. You can name trees, animals, and humans, yet, they all derive their existence from the ground of the earth and the light of the sun; therefore, names aside, they are all expressions of the earth and the sun.

The earth and sun are all expressions of a galaxy, which is an expression of The Universe, which is GOD’s no-thing meeting GOD’S every-thing (which adds up to no-thing, but is obviously virtually real).

So what is real then? Whatever you believe! (how powerful then is your own mind!)

Many have a hard time with the idea that Existence is a virtual reality. Yet, you watch TV, go to movies and surf the internet. None of which are inherently “real”.

You read posts like this and your emotions are triggered. You sit in a movie and feel emotions of anger at the villain and esteem the hero, you laugh and you cry. Many think they actually know the actor without realizing that they are acting. All if it, every bit of it is but a play of light and dark!sound familiar?


Current advances in astronomy and quantum physics, and other related disciplines has produced objective evidence of how the universe is formed.

We now know that stars have life cycles. Stars burn their mass (which is matter compressed to the point of nuclear explosion), expanding in size and heat as the matter is expunged. When the star can no longer maintain it’s expressive state, it explodes, creating the biggest of explosions ever witnessed or measured. This is called a super-nova.

The explosion, subject to gravitational force, causes a massive collapse of the star, creating a black hole (Steven Hawkings has done a lot of work on this topic). Black holes draw everything into themselves for potentially millions of miles around. Their attractive-compressive force is so great that they literally bend space-time, light, and draw any “thing” into them.

Everything, light included, is compressed in the center of a black hole, creating yet another star. When the compressive force reaches critical mass-heat relationships, what is sometimes referred to as a white hole is created and yet another star is born!

It is because of such observations that many of the world’s top theorists from relevant fields have come to refute the idea of “THE BIG BANG”.

John Wheeler, Fred Hoyle and others have suggested the BIG BANG theory is only about 3% accurate. They state that the BIG BANG should rightfully be called the CONTINUOUS BANG. Logically then, we see that what is going on above in the heavens is beautifully exemplified here on earth in the example I gave earlier of the compost pile, or of Buddha as “shit on a stick”

Keep in mind now, as we go further, that yin in-folds and yang un-folds. Matter is gravitational and light is akin to a force of levitation; roots hold onto the earth, trees grow to the light.

A seed is a tree in-folded, and the marriage of earth, moon and the sun’s influence (light) un-folds the tree that was in-folded in the seed.


We live this process constantly throughout the year, the months, the day, the hour and moment to moment.

GOD/ZERO/PURE POTENTIAL expresses itself in and as existence. We exist. We are here.

The marriage of some-thing and no-thing (tai-chi) produces the Universe and the life within it.

My diagram exemplifies this process:

A. You are hungry. You start with an empty plate.

B. You put 2 pieces of corn and 2 pieces of chicken on your plate that are expressions of light and dark (tai-chi).

C. You eat what’s on your plate and now the plate is empty again.

D. Though there is no food on your plate, the food ends up in you. Yet, If I go looking for that corn or chicken in you, in the span of hours, I will find no trace of it, but I will find you!

You have taken the marriage of light and dark, emergent from the mass, matter and light of a star, consumed the products of it, metabolized (burned it just like a star does!), and converted the molecules into body and the energy into emotion, thought, motion and behavior (action).

Where did the matter go. No where. It’s still right here on earth, in the universe.

Where did the energy go?

Inside you and around you, in relationships.

What does that produce!experiences. Who’s experiences? Yours, mine, everyone’s; whatever you do to you or another is done to the whole; if you kill a tree, you’ve killed a part of a forest, which is a part of nature, of which you and are certainly inclusive of.

This is exactly why sages or enlightened people have said throughout antiquity that anyone that truly understands God (equates to the outer circle of the tai-chi symbol contains it All) would never participate in war because to do so is to kill one’s Self!

Because GOD is PURE POTENTIAL, ALL POSSIBILITIES, time is NOT a linear possibility; that would imply going from point A to point B.

Just as one may theoretically film their entire life and record it onto a DVD (matter being an attribute of THE ABSOLOUTE, exemplifying ALL-THINGS (embodiment, seed) and play it back to be experienced again in linear or space-time (entanglement or relationship) by projecting what’s contained in/or on the matter represented by the DVD.

It is only because of light transmission that such an experience can be had. The DVD itself has all the experiences contained within it AT ONCE.

My diagram shows these DVD’s of our past, present and potential futures all stacked up, representing what is referred to as vertical time.

To understand vertical time, imagine taking a piece of string a foot long and putting a black dot on the left end to represent the past. Then put a dot in the middle to represent “now”, and then put a dot on the far right end of the string to represent the future. Now, take the past and future end and joint them to create a circle; a circle has no beginning or end. Therefore, in God, the past, present and future are ONE; vertical time. This means CONSCIOUSNESS is watching and experiencing every possible DVD at once – NOW. In God, (the outer circle) there is no past, no future, only NOW.

Because of the meeting of the now of EVERY-THING with the now of NO-THING, THE ABSOLUTE essentially produces virtual vibrations. These produce existence in time. Yet, regardless of how big the Universe is or how massive the apparent vibrations, relative to THE ABSOLUTE, they never happened!

The meeting of light and dark then, is such that the light produced by Spirit (transformation) illuminates and unfolds the potential in-folded in the seeds of matter; matter means to measure, and in some languages it comes from the root word, Mother!

As you can see by my diagram, the lens of the projector has the tai-chi symbol on it representing the infinite transitional state (spirituality) that results in what we know of as life, which hopefully by now you realize is just a name given to express what may be deemed as the positive or outwardly expressive aspect of a cycle.

The cycle of “live and apparent death” is exemplified in tai-chi, which has now where to go. You see that what is being projected is labeled “MAYA”. This means The Grand Illusion. MAYA then, means the same thing as VITRUAL REALITY!

Remember, when you are watching a movie, the movie, for all intensive purposes isn’t real. It’s a virtual reality. Yet, as you interact with it, you have thoughts, emotions, moods, and bodily reactions and behaviors toward this or that actor in the movie, often forgetting!it’s only a movie, a virtual reality.

That said, I must now ask you, were your reactions, your thoughts, moods, and behaviors spawned from the experience of watching the virtual reality (movie) real? Is your sweat real? Are your tears real? Is your trembling real?

If you answer is no, I’ll ask you if there are movies you refuse to see or don’t want your children to see? The answer, as you can well imagine is going to be yes(!) for most people. Then, right there, you see just how real a virtual reality is. Why then, may I ask, if one can grasp this, is it so hard to understand the nature of MAYA?


This diagram represents cycles of time contained within infinity; infinity means All Time.

In Hinduism, these are referred to as Cycles of Brahma; if you search that on Google or go to wickipedia.com you can find explanations of them.

The cycles I have here are from Theosophy. The names are not relevant for my discussion. All I’m hoping to point out here is that everything we know of or associate with “God” equates to our own ideas. Our ideas are based on our perceived experiences.

Buddha’s primary teaching was that as long as we have desires for things, we stay entangled in Samsara, cycles of time. Along the way, we all eventually reach the level of conscious development and awareness that we don’t have to keep choosing things.

We may, at that point, choose Nirvana. “Nirvana” essentially means, to blow out, to extinguish. Like a moth’s urge to be one with the flame, only to find itself without wings and in pain, when we are in-authentic in our conceptions and projections (fighting over God!), we burn our wings off and lay there in pain, only to realize the True nature of God.

Each step of the journey, we gain more capacity for empathy and compassion. When we are done, we may choose Nirvana. That choice is the choice to extinguish all ego-mind and we (as “we” we currently know) are GONE! We become as a coin, melted, without any distinction of heads or tails, life or death.

Joseph Campbell beautifully explains, once one chooses Nirvana, they have no idea as to what they will become next. You may wake up walking across the floor as a cockroach.

So, this isn’t a decision that one takes lightly. From my own experience, I can tell you that facing this decision is SHOCKING TO THE CORE OF YOUR VERY BEING! I’m still here ☺.

SO HERE WE ALL ARE!


Looking at my diagram above, TAO represents that which can’t be known, yet, that which expresses itself in and as existence.

TAO is CONSCIOUSNESS. CONSCIOUSNESS CAUSE, paradoxically, because CONSCIOUSNESS has nothing to be “conscious of” but ITSELF; EVERY-THING meeting NO-THING = ZERO.

Yet, like a zero, we know we can multiply and divide it endlessly and we still have apparent something’s, but the truth is that ZERO IS STILL ZERO.

Causal Body represents SOUL or CONSCIOUSNESS.

The interaction of light and dark (tai-chi) produces The Universe; ONE SONG.

The vibration of THE SONG equates to all possible living experiences in, and as movement, life, and time. All of which are VIRTUAL REALITIES.

The energy fields listed as Higher mental, Lower mental, Astral, Etheric and Physical are all labels giving to describe different vibrational rates and realities amalgamated into Existence (Nature) and therefore life.

As I’ve come to understand it after much meditation and now over 400 shamanic journeys (many of profound significance), the human being is an emergent expression of the unfolding of that which is in-folded in our sun.

There may or may not be other “humans” in the universe, but we do know we live on a planet warmed by a sun and that we are here in 3rd dimensional reality that is the placeholder on Mother earth.

Just as a study of embryology shows very clearly that the neonate embryo, at various stages expresses a variety of other creatures in nature, and culminates in a human being who’s DNA clearly has almost every other creature’s DNA in-folded within it, we are here as the current expression of the process of unfolding the marriage of our (father) Sun and our (mother) Earth, which can’t possibly be separated from the unfolding of the entire experience we call the Universe.

There will come a time when the species of human beings transform into something different. There was a time when dinosaurs were here and what we know as “us” wasn’t here.

Why would nature change Her natural existence, her way of experiencing Herself and Her nature of “Being” just because many of us are confused and deluded and have beliefs in stories – movies inside of movies inside of movies!?

Conclusion

Life, like “heads”, has no meaning without death (tails). When you flip a coin over from heads to tails, you may be looking at tails, but heads is still there, in your hand!

Neither life or death can exist without the middle of the coin – TAO.

If you follow life to the middle, there is no life or death. If you follow death to the middle, there is no life or death, there is NO-THING and EVERY-THING; a molten coin contains heads and tails within it as potential currency.

No matter where you spend your coin (life), the currency can’t escape; it has no objective value outside of the social consensus of it’s agreed upon value.

Your ideas of God and god have no currency outside the realm of people that perceive such and such a value. What you are, God IS. What you aren’t, God IS. What God is exemplifies what you’ve believed God to be, yet, any such belief has no expressed value in or as GOD, for GOD IS PURE, UNADULTERATED POTENTIAL.

How you use your potential in life is your choice. Your free-will.

I’ve come to realize that love is a boomerang. I’ve found it easier and more fun to try and only toss around that which I’m likely to enjoy catching on the return.

To Live!
To Death!
To Your inherent POTENTIAL!

Have a great weekend!

Love and chi,
Paul Chek