It's arguably the most vexing confront in the entire lexicon of
Conversations For Transformation.
It's also arguably the most perplexing. For sure it's one of the
hardest distinctions to grasp. Yet it's unavoidable. It's like
gravity.
It can't be side-stepped. It can't be avoided - and Man! do we look
furtively for ways to avoid it at any cost! We remain incurably
optimistic that there's a way around it. More than that, we
want to believe there's gotta be
a way out.
I'm
sorry,
there isn't. There's
no way out.
It's the realization that
you are a machine.
You're a no-choice stimulus-response machine totally run by automatic
circuitry, the essential ones of which frantically avoid confronting
being a no-choice stimulus-response machine totally run by automatic
circuitry. Look: the machine not confronting it's a machine, is its
primary defense mechanism. As long as it can maintain the
illusion that it's not a machine, a machine can lay claim to being free
ie to having freedom. But it's a faux claimed freedom, an
illusory freedom. Illusory, thrashing freedom is the only freedom
available to a machine. When a machine spends more time laboring under
illusory freedom than it does in actually being free, I call that
"thrashing". "Thrashing" is a term I've borrowed from
IBM
(International Business Machines) mainframe
computer architecture.
The thrashing of a machine trying not to be a machine, is as absurd, as
futile, as hopeless, and as ridiculous as
a dog trying not to be a
dog.
Yet it's easier and more obvious for you to see for yourself how
ridiculous
a dog trying not to be a
dog
is, than for you to see for yourself how ridiculous you trying not to
be a machine, are.
OK
Laurence:
in what way am I a machine? Look: it's not "way", singular. You're a
million ways a machine - and more. If that lands for you
as implausible, here are three areas to test out: physical (your body),
emotional (your feelings), mental (your thoughts and memories), the
three areas which comprise your worldly existence.
Physical: your fingernails grow, your blood flows, your
digestive system absorbs. The exhortation "Grow fingernails, grow!"
isn't required from you. Neither is "Flow blood, flow!". Indeed
"Stop growing / stop flowing" has no effect ie is a
non-starter. And let's
face it:
you have no clue what your stomach is doing with the
oatmeal you ate for
breakfast
this morning. Digestion happens by itself, mechanically, automatically,
without your intention, without your permission, without your control.
Emotional: if your feelings and emotions weren't on automatic,
you'd be in control of them. If you were in control of your feelings,
you'd feel good all the time, from when you awoke in the morning, until
you went to sleep at night. Tell the truth: do you feel good all the
time? All the time? How's that going for you? Enough said.
Mental: it's one of the first things we notice with the onset of
transformed awareness: we don't think thoughts. Thoughts think
us. And they never stop. Thinking is automatic. If you're seriously
persuaded that thinking isn't automatic, stop thinking. You can't. Also
notice when something suddenly reminds you of something
else, the recollection process ie the process of remembering, is fully
automatic. Memories simply appear. Your control over the
process, isn't required (it's simply irrelevant).
You are a machine.
Face it:
you're a million ways a machine. There's
no way out
- and how machine-like is to look for
a way out!
That said, for those million ways
you are a machine,
there may be just one way in which you're free: you speak. You
language.
Over what comes out of our mouths, we have total choice, total control,
and freedom. Maybe.
You are a machine.
You will always be a machine. And
you are a machine
that can speak - which may be your one-in-a-millionth
access
to freedom.