We have an urgent thing to answer: What is violence? Where does violence come from? Where does violence lie within us?

There are people who talk about freedom of the mind, and its emptiness. It is my concern that their beliefs and their concepts about all these theories fill the same void religion fills. The only difference is that their ideology changes to their new adopted behaviors of meditation or whatever “fashion” is available to them that makes them feel good or safe. The problem of ideology and belief is the lack of questioning the fundamental reasons: Who are we? What is a concept? What is to think? How do we think? What is love? What is to observe? Etc. These questions may seem obvious, but it is in that trap that we have been living, a trap that can no longer be contained. It is ready to explode. There are philosophers, religious figures, and others who have attempted to give answers to these questions. However, it can no longer be a state of complete denial where deep thought is left for some, it is our responsibility to ask questions, and try to answer them, not for the sake of knowledge, but your own fulfillment.

Now, it seems easier and more tempting to just read a “guru”, and believe everything he says, instead of challenging him and giving him your own level, you as “he” as the same capacities, the only difference is that he made a living by being “a guru”. You cannot. Most of us, have to work or do things to survive, and being a guru is not an option, unless you are one of those writers who say to know everything about the world, but in fact are a bunch of copy pasters from different traditions of thought.

Therefore, this post today will be to challenge you… I dare you to think! To ask questions. To forget about the “guru”, to face life with all you’ve got, painful or not, it is all we actually have, our experience, and if we continue to rely on those “mythical figures” (academic, political, or religious) we will fail to see our mistakes, and will be keep doing them for centuries to come.

So, how to ask questions? With more questions, without “definite answers”, however you will gain new perspectives about life. You will be able to see how there is no actual “true” or “false” (in a deep sense), but perspectives that have different ways of seeing and experiencing life. As I said before, these questions are not about finding perfect answers or new beliefs… It is about experiencing life in a new way… BEWARE the guru, the knower, the whatever… better know thyself!

Let’s confront the gurus, prophets, philosophers, etc, and realize in yourself the correct perspective of what they are saying. Got a belief? Challenge it. Challenge your own belief. Don’t fall into the your own guru bias. You have to be very careful, very aware of your thoughts, and how they arise, and how they dissolve. Why? You use your thoughts to understand life. It is a source of your “experience”, you cannot simply trust your senses because it is “obvious” to do so, you need not only to challenge others, but to challenge yourself to the extreme. This might sound difficult or extraordinary, and it might be… Until you realize how relevant, and transcendent for your experience it is to see beyond concepts, to observe beyond beliefs, to actually LIVE, and instead of being in a “virtual reality” of yourself.

Ask questions: Use one question, and answer it with another until you have a bag of questions you are constantly trying to answer day and night. You will reach answers, doubt those, and start again. Why do we want to feel security of knowing? Is there something else beside knowledge? What about experience? Is experience knowledge? How can live an experience if I am always thinking about nonsense? Or is the experience a thought? If experience is a thought, then… Is all reality a product of thought? Is there something beyond thoughts?

How can you assure that the mind is never empty? How can you assure everybody lives a mind without emptiness? Why is emptiness so important if you have never had your mind empty? Isn’t that same “idea” of emptiness the same thing that “prevents” you from being empty? And if you reach emptiness how can you be sure that there is this divine? And if it is divine, how can you be sure that divine is not obtained through untraditional non explored ways that only you can reach through self-contemplation with or without thoughts? Why do mediators want to empty the mind? Isn’t the mind already empty, but we strive to “live” the illusions due to the security felt by what we know? Why would you want to achieve one-mindedness if one-mindedness already is? Why try to achieve something that is not achievable because it already has been achieved?

Why is there a classical sense of traditional meditation? Is meditation total awareness (Including your thoughts whenever they arise and non-thoughts)? What happens when there are no thoughts? Is this possible? How can you assure that there is no possible existence without thoughts just because you haven’t experienced a life without “constant thoughts”? Ask about contemplation, how does contemplation relate with thought? How could awareness of these conflicts change things? What is contemplation? Could there be a state of constant awareness?  For example, I am observing the conflict inside my head without judging, but just listening to it and trying to understand it. Could this be meditation? Why should you follow a tradition about what is a “meditative state”? What is justice? What is freedom? Do you really have free will? If so, could the idea of having free will a belief that you want to nurture to feel security and feel you have control over something?

These questions are not easy, some may find them too difficult to answer because that means to change your entire way to observe and experience the world. You will change, and in this change if there is no peace, but more conflict, your answers are creating more and more beliefs that do not have a foundation of truth. Why? What is truth? What is peace? What is violence? How does violence work within the mind? Is our nature violent? Why? Why could you accept a concept like that seeing the implication of such violence in the world? Could concepts and beliefs be the source of violence? Could our identification of ourselves with these beliefs create violence to defend these beliefs that create us security? Where does true security lie? Could security be related with violence? What would happen if we understood security? Would fear disappear? What is fear? How is fear felt? What are the consequences of fear? How does frustration relate with fear and anger? Can you live without anger? How is fear helpful? What are the limits of fear? Are we really free? What is freedom?

It is about challenging the known, not with a new belief… And although, that “will” and might happen, the ultimate purpose should not be to gain a new “way of thinking”, but a new way of being… How?

Changing the way you experience life, love!

• assumptions assured by confirmed predictions
• belief systems sustained by thoughts
• projections maintained by memories through experiences

Concepts are rarely questioned because we even believe others have the same definition because “they are in the dictionary”. However, these dictionaries lack insight because they are used to create a common ground. They do not express the real “use” of the word or words because language is a constantly changing mix.

This is important to establish because the main reason of conflict in between humans beings are: “Misunderstandings”

The number one cause of dissolution in unions is: Lack of communication.

For example:
My concept about love is not the same one you had, so I file for a divorce because you lacked the ability to love me as I wished, and we did not learn to how communicate properly to each other what does love mean. We can talk for hours, but a deep communication is lacking because of the misconceptions of the main words being used.

How many words have you asked yourself what do they mean to you? Have you asked to those who you constantly relate to… What does it mean to them a friendship, love, honesty, companionship, loyalty, etc.?

What you see is not what actually is; it is the image you have created of it the one being understood. However, it kind of works this way… We can communicate, but we also live so much division when we don’t know how to explain what we wish to express.

Frederic della Faille

We may see and live the same truth, but each one of us uses a lens on a different focus that is seems we are seeing different things. So much anger, aggression, and separation created by these wrongly understood concepts, and by the interpretation of these when applied into a certain environment.

How can you commit to a relationship when you cannot even listen to the other’s expectations when using the word “love”?

It is a spiral that goes somehow like this:

• Lack of communication eventually results in broken expectations.
• Broken expectations leave you lost in translation, then communication becomes even worse.
• It all ends up in sadness, and at the end; if not careful it turns out into anger and hate

Communication means: I listen to you fully. I close my thoughts for a moment. I open my heart to you. I care what you have to say, although I don’t agree with you. I may even grow and have better ideas with those remarks I don’t agree on.

It does not matter if he does not listen to you. It is YOU the one who should listen. Is is YOU the one who should become aware of the situation. It is YOU who can change the world, not others.

Remember, I may be wrong. Think things out. Ask yourself more questions. There is no one out there to say something enlightening. It is you the one who has all the questions; therefore all the answers.

If others see you want to listen, they may try to… but even if they don’t… move on. Learn from each experience and open those eyes to new understandings by simply listening.

As a consequence, many things that make you feel great or bad about yourself, may be not the facts. It could be those ideas you are lingering on, but those can change at any instant.

However, the instant you understand you have the ability inside yourself to really feel great, and it does not depend on your ideas or concepts about yourself:

You are really free. Not free in the sense of my country is free, but the freedom that even though you may be in a prison… You are really free of yourself, and you become the real you.

WHY?

A concept is a mental elaboration of the “object” thought. An idea represents the conjunction of those concepts into a bigger elaboration, and your inner relationship with those concepts.

Each idea can produce an action, an emotion, a desire, etc. It is the product of concepts, created since birth, by the people who surround you and your reaction to those interactions.

We have the ability to change your results, to change the reactions produced, if you take some of your time to think about:

Who is the real you beyond all those concepts and ideas?

How deep are you willing to go?

Society states: These are the rules, enter the matrix, you cannot think for yourself once you are there.

You have a choice each instant: I want to take the responsibility of my ideas and their consequence; created or not by society through deranged concepts.

You can listen inside yourself; you know when something is going wrong, when there is something out there waiting to be understood, but you don’t have the time to find out why, you may be sad or angry at everything, you feel fear…

• When will enough be enough?
• Who are you?
• Why do we exist? What is the purpose of life and yours?
• Are you happy? Are you sad? Are you in fear?
• What is wrong and right? Does good and bad exist as I believe it does?
• Why do I judge others? Am I judging myself as I judge others with those same ideas?
• Why do you do what you do? Are you doing things because of you or because of what the collective mind tells you is right?