The spacesuit

Meanwhile, flew to Phuket. Vipassana without leaving the office. Continuing to dig into the nature of consciousness. Think about how much what’s happening depends on what just happened. Obviously every moment is predetermined by the one before it. And by what happened a bit earlier. And by what was in the past. And what was in childhood. And so on.

We watch our life on the inner screen of our spacesuit. And we replay ready-made scenes served up by the conveyor belt of the mind. The body and mind create the sensation of self. And it seems like you’re doing everything yourself, though the spacesuit is making the decisions. We take its thoughts for our own. It’s a masterful fabrication where the degree of forgery is very high. What’s forged isn’t so much the picture of the world — that’s not so important — but its interpretation, conclusions, judgments, opinions, intentions.

So is everything predetermined? Yes and no. The spacesuit can be controlled simply by thinking. By making a choice. You decide something, then it does everything on its own. You can decide as many times as you want. But the moment you stop deciding, autopilot kicks in. And everything is predetermined again. The spacesuit is stitched to this world from the outside, just as we’re stitched to it from the inside. And so we project ourselves and our desires outward. For maximum effectiveness, desires should be “true.” Arising from within. Caused by you, not by what’s happening.

To get rid of parasitic interference, you need to stop resisting what’s happening. Simply not judging and not jumping into every passing train. Anything can happen — evaluations, opinions, and judgments aren’t needed. The joke is that by reacting, you start doing what the spacesuit feeds you. You think those are your thoughts. Whatever’s triggered by external events can simply be ignored, without reacting at all. As the Recluse used to say: “I meet everything with the best I have — calm.”

True thoughts don’t start from outside. You can identify them by their source and direction. The impulse should come from within. Like in yoga — spread the fingers. What triggered this thought and where is it aimed. Aimed at the past? At evaluating what happened? Or at creating a new reality? Want not from others, but for others. Not from yourself, but for yourself. Think forward.

We are constantly in a sleep where it seems like we’re awake. Meanwhile, we mistake our automatisms for our desires. Breaking out of this state, or at least loosening the grip, is possible by deliberately counteracting ingrained programs. The difficulty is that the automation layer is very thick. There’s not as much control over life as it seems. For those who see meaning in this, here’s a snippet of a recent conversation about counteracting automatisms:

Choose your future. Choose life.