Banana and Blueberries

 Banana and Blueberry Oatmeal this morning. 

Thinking about how Ram Dass calls a society a conspiracy. Everyone is saying and thinking the same things and that makes those things seem real. The difference between a lie or illusion and reality is whether or not everyone agrees and goes along with it. And any society is invested in maintaining those beliefs because it keeps people from freaking out and it's also set up in a way to keep the people who have power in power.  He calls it "relative reality". And it's really not about being right. It's about being able to hold two different perspectives (both of which are illusions) at once to see things for what they are and not be entirely inside of them. He says that he can use illusions to dispel other illusions as long as he knows at the end he's going to throw away all of them.

The really interesting part though I think is that when people ask him about their problems and hang-ups he refers to them as "mind states" that people are buying into and he dismisses them as uninteresting. 

So something like FOMO, fear of missing out. Or feeling like everyone is off living a much better life than you are right now. That's only real to the extent that you buy into that. That the best use of your time is spent doing things that seem interesting in a specific way to other people. You can spend your time worrying about it. But it doesn't seem very interesting.

The other thing he talks about is that feelings are still valid. You can't simply dismiss them with complete and perfect apathy. He says it's okay to be afraid or anxious or jealous or angry or whatever as long as you aren't busy being anxious or jealous or angry. Instead of saying, I am angry, you say, there is anger. As a thing that is watching the anger. 

There are some things I disagree with. Ram Dass talks about people coming up to him and saying, "I'm depressed" and he says, "are you really?" And they say, "yes. I'm depressed." And he says, "Well, is the person telling me they're depressed depressed?" And they say, "no." And he acts like it's this big a-Ha! moment that proves some part of them isn't depressed. And I get that that is all about looking at things at different levels and not being trapped in any one state of mind or feeling but also it came across as a bit dismissive. I don't know. How we view depression has changed a lot since the 90s when he was saying that. 

The takeaway for me is to accept how you feel and what you think, be honest about it, but then also ask, is it useful? Is it interesting? Is it doing anything for you? And I think there's a lot of power in that.