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30. What's Happening Baby?

It is impossible to experience something that has not happened. You can happily dream about or be horrified at a future experience but you cannot experience it until it happens. After it happens and you experience it you can remember it, again, either happily or sadly. Life is a succession of moment-to-moment actual experiences that you have. Dreams, good or bad, are dreams but Life is what actually happens.

So what is this reality that you actually experience? The bad news is that you can never be absolutely sure of what reality is because there is no absolute certainty anywhere. You can only estimate what it was, is, or might be, as in high (or low) probabilies. You can check out Plato.s gorgeous example (The Republic, The Allegory of the Cave) but common sense will tell you the same thing. See also Chapter 3, "We Have Free Will, Free Choices and Free Reactions".

The good news is that it doesn't matter. What matters to you is how you react to it. Your reaction is your only sure experience. Something happens and you react to it and that's all the experience you are ever going to have. The super good news is that how you react to it is under your control.

Byron Katie was asked if she was a Buddha. "No", she said, "I am a lover of what is." I am beginning to see that the practical wisdom of that remark. Reality is What Is. It's what's happening, it's what's going on, and it's what's in front of your face. Not what should be but what actually is. You can't put qualifications on reality. And you must, to be free (and sane), see it clearly. "When you argue with reality, you lose-but only always." (That's another jewel from Katie.)

With logic in the driver's seat then I can (a) observe reality clearly and (b) analyze my emotional reactions to it. I am then free (at last!) to experience, learn and enjoy the full contrast of reality. Then the happy stuff just thrills me and the not so happy I can disapprove of, and sometimes fight against.

If you step back and see the entire good and evil situation here on good 'ole Mother Earth you might wonder why the generously sprinkled bad stuff even exists. The evil (anything non-life promoting) is, presently, a necessary contrast to the good. It is just not possible to learn anything at all without the use of contrast. To put it another way, evil serves a functional purpose. I think that purpose is for us to grow in awareness of our nature. Hey, this is all God's plan, not mine. I'm just trying to understand and describe it.

A fable about contrast:

A very young angel was chatting with his elders in Heaven one time. "Am I happy?" he asked. He was told that he was in Heaven and everyone in Heaven was happy. "But how do I know I'm happy?" To know that, he was told, he would have to be shown the contrast between sadness and happiness.

"Who will show me?" he asked.

"On the earth-plane there will be some humans who will be full of fear and acting despicably." he was told. "And you will have to confront them and vanquish those who will not change their ways."

"But I thought we were all part of God and God is good?"

"That is true but you must experience that for yourself. Some very brave angels travel tthe earth-plane, allow themselves to lose their self-awareness, become fearful, and act despicably. They do that so that young angels can experience the difference between good and bad. You will experience evil and then you will return, as all humans do, to Heaven. Then you will be aware that everything is God and God is good."

"Those brave angels are performing a service for you and when you are vanquishing them never forget, even if you must kill them, to love them for their service."

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