by Morris Tarantella
Originally published in TNTC Vol.1, No. 4 Nov. '89
from
Zelator Website
A fatuous paradigm that is
currently running amok though the New Age community for
quite a while is better known as "You Create Your Own
Reality" (short: YCYOR) and is (deliberately, I might
add) creating a hell lot of confusion.
YCYOR is a very
misleading and tentative paradigm with a certain
half-truth in it, that is never expressed in this way in
the Esoteric Traditions .... and if you read MT's witty
remarks, you'll soon know why. MT did all reasonable and
even unreasonable work to help you discard the fatuous
paradigm while helping you to place its half-true parts
into a meaningful context. |
The "Two-To-One Lazaris Is Pete Rose's Business Consultant" award.
To the innumerable "me too" channel sources and their accommodating
mounts, who've been espousing and promoting the bumptious New Age
dogma "you create your own reality". Let's get this straight.
Extra-mundane source or no extra-mundane source, the sensibilities
of all the rest of mankind aren't deceiving them: you do not "create
your own reality".
"Oh, what a spoilsport!" we can just hear the chorus. Why not let
those who want to, abide peacefully in the solipsism of their
spook-sanctioned presumption that -- despite the alleged
interconnectedness of everything(!) -- the common ego-communiqué of
personal hermetic insularity is valid after all, and "I" can indeed
conjure a positive-think Paradise to "preserve me eternal" in the
midst of everyone else's self-created, hallucinatory world-disaster.
Pure compassion compels this contraindication, explained from the
Initiated point of view; for the ultimate result of experiencing the
philosophical shortcomings of such a proclamation, is to leave no
room for the subject other than to suppose some personal deficiency,
an inadequate grasp of the principle or incomplete commitment of
belief. When special consensus has it you can make your
trailer-truck fly through the private force of will, you can only
come down hard on yourself when it inevitably fails to do so. This
is hardly preferable to the "personal sense of helplessness" such a
precept of wishful thinking was supposed to compensate. One would
think a person might actually be grateful, should someone come along
and simply point out to him it isn't his fault, that the "special
consensus" is wrong.
But what about all the evidence to the effect our circumstances do
indeed tend to correspond to, and often even print out in an
uncannily mirroring way, the strongest profile of our personal
wants, aims, wishes, desires, hopes, fears and traits? Often things
"come to us", situations or opportunities materialize as if by magic
in answer to some personal formulation of wish or will, that
nonetheless quite clearly couldn't have been induced to "slide into
place" by strictly personal effort, by hard physical work or
ordinary exertion in the space-time field. It's quite true that often
things, people and events seem drawn into our sphere by a
coordination of factors manifestly beyond our personal grasp, but
answering eerily to the character of our personal being as if genii
had conjured them.
This widely-held observation isn't incorrect. It is the part of
reality that makes of the New Age dogma a half-truth. It reflects a
real, functional principle in the esoteric description of the
mind-body whole; but it does not thereby authorize the fatuous "you
create your own reality" as a full-blown truth in its own right.
Why You Don't
"Create Your Own Reality"
Just sit there for a minute. Attune to a mere soupcon of
self-reflective consciousness and you can't help but notice you're
hardly self-generated; there isn't one thing about yourself,
including the environment you perceive or your "personal" will, that
issues from any sense of a self-creating "you". Indeed, "you" are
spontaneously endowed, before the self-reflective fact, as the
coordinate presence of a total and given pattern of Being. It is all
immediately established, without personal intercession on your part.
The patterns through which you perceive, the modes by which you move
and cognize take up your being without a whimper of protest, a hint
of objection or even notice. This vastly creative process by which
you spontaneously come to yourself, on its terms, is so suavely
accepted as inherent expression of your being that you claim it as
yourself without even observing you do so (i.e., these are "my"
thoughts, "my" words, "my" perceptions, "my" ideas, "my" movements).
Wait, we hear the protests, perhaps I don't actually create the
basic patterns of Being or the functions of existence, but I do seem
to individualize them. I make them my own. I synthesize all these
"given" features as personal contents from my unique angle, so that
"my" expression of the common pattern is distinguishable from yours
and so very intimately identifiable as me. In that sense I create my
own reality out of the given materials, which really aren't anything
in particular until I endow them with the unique expressive life
that is "me".
This ordinary qualification is acceptable, as long as we notice that
the vaunted "personalization" or "individualizing" of the general
creative endowment of Being is also a function of that endowment,
not something privately assumed. The creative pattern of Being, of
which we are expression, individualizes. That is its attribute, not
ours. It can only be considered innately "mine" insofar as "I" come
after the fact, along with the perspectival endowment of
individualization. In that sense I am the process of
individualization; but I don't create it.
The Cloud Of One-Knowing
"I" exist in reflective and receptive relation to that process which
takes its point of departure from the total, given Pattern of Being.
My "knowing" comes structured. It is a function of consciousness, or
whole-awareness (i.e. conscious self-awareness); but it furnishes an
interpretive syntax of cognition to that consciousness. It possesses
an inbuilt grammar of
structured variables.
All my instrumental processes, modes of action and so forth are
patterned terms of this "knowing". The overall function of my being
with its sensory and motor, autonomic and conscious systems is that
of knowing. In reality there aren't a lot of different "systems",
diverse organs and instrumental complexes, some for physiological
processing and life-sustenance, some for acting and responding, some
for perceiving and some for knowledge.
There is only an overall
system or multi-dimensional Pattern of differentiated currents,
properties and phases serving the single common function of Knowing;
for the whole pattern is an expression of consciousness.
.................
Read the full report or ...read more excerpts
below:
Suppose, again, that a developer bent upon the "personal, positive
affirmation of success" takes it upon himself to reshape his reality
according to his heart's desire by speculating the astronomical
increase of profits through conversion of some obscure "low-rent"
properties kept on the back burner, into mega-buck bungalows for the
"upwardly mobile" demographically anticipated in migration toward
that particular district ; without hesitation, as expression of the
faith and supreme confidence he has in the self-justification of his
aim, he evicts all the low-rent tenants on the spot (who, ipso
facto, must have wished such misery on themselves). A month later,
he's mugged in a back alley by one of those he'd peremptorily
displaced, and who'd therefore had no recourse to any but the life
of the multiplying homeless.
In both "hypothetical" cases, was it the lingering doubt, the
persistence of some conditioned hesitancy or especially in the
latter case a misguided atavism of "compassion", guilt or empathy
which secretly served to undermine the perfect correspondence of
desired effect, thereby producing an accurate reflection of the
"negative" belief-structure?
No that just doesn't account for it. We can say for the sake of
"hypothesis" that the given developer had no such remorse (for we
can certainly find exemplifications of the genre in real life!); and
we can infer that our breasted New Ager is as fatuous as he
sounds...
But there's that word fatuous! What makes him fatuous? Evidently,
not taking into account the obvious context! Remember, we said the
potential viability of the term "fatuous" had to do with context !
What makes the "you-create-your-own-reality" evangelist fatuous
(rather than a demonstrable God of the most egregious solipsism) is
precisely the fact that all such "personal decreeing", "positive
thinking" and confident imagining takes place in an inevitable
context. There are implications! There are repercussions! No one
"decrees" in a personal or private, solipsistic vacuum. There is a
variegated World of myriad "pulls" and "claims" coexisting along
with the private desires and designs of the given ego-subject.
But "so what?" we hear the die-hard "reality-creator" claim "don't
we remain untouched by those 'co-existents' as long as we keep
secure in the confidence of our own private deservedness, our own
authoritative affirmations and specific commissions of positive
thought-re-inforcement?"
Report To The Commissioner
No. Man does not live by "commission" alone. This is why you do not
create your own reality, but merely generate reality-hypotheses or
scenarios which are continuously reflected and tested against the
Whole; and the Whole, being inseparable from the Potential of your
own innate-global Being, is constituted by the explicit and implicit
alike, by that which is produced through active or positive
commission and that which results from the gaps, blind-spots and
vacuums of interpretive omission. All the lines, potential and
actual, exist within one's being and are inevitably calculated into
the total account! This is what it means when we say there's a
context in which all our desire-formulation and "decreeing" takes
place.
This is a Deity-centered reality, not an ego-centered reality. Only
the totality of the soul-nature is in touch with the Totality of
Spirit-being. Anything else necessarily involves a partial
perspective, a conceptual self-estimation producing inevitable
blindspots, negatively-recessed lacunae as well as "positive"
outlines to be filled in obligingly by experience. What you have
selectively omitted from "your reality", is manifested as well! Gaps
in thinking and experience which develop one "side" at the expense
of the other, or which temporarily prevent a latent potential of
certain centers or combinations of centers from being realized, do
not simply "pass by" as a domain of non-experience. They aren't just
quietly tucked away as surplus "potential" with which you're not
obliged to have any relation.
On the contrary, such gaps show up; they manifest in the
unstoppable/inexplicable erosion of all those things you've
materialized as expression of "personal preference". They appear as
unanticipated, unexpected or unwanted circumstances which
nonetheless bear a negative-identity to the self-selected "positive
profile".
Although the deep zero value characterizing the Total potential of
the mind-body pattern definitely allows for what the Ra material
calls "random catalyst" (a variable which simply cannot be taken
into account by the "you create your own reality" proponents), most
products of omission have very identifiable correspondence to the
personality-structure in question. They are drawn into the field of
that personality as inevitably as the "positive" products of
commission (like the mugging received by the "developer", along with
his projected profits). We can of course say the "victim" still
deserves his fate or has drawn his fate to himself by a quality of
callousness embedded in his characteristic thought-formulae; and
occasionally this interpretation may touch on some real factor
involved in the negative effect. But neither the simple presence of
some attitude toward elements of the ultimate negative resultant,
nor explanations of residual "karma" (or anything of the kind) may
adequately account for all cases in the same category.
It is just simply not true that every rape victim somehow "invited"
the experience as a personal form of "commission"; the fact of each
Soul being a global microcosm of Total potential, automatically
means that a certain amount of experience is going to be the
resultant "invitation" of sheer aggravated emptiness on the
balance-sheet of the (symmetrically self-compensating) soul-record.
Note: aggravated emptiness. This then is a magnified deficiency with
respect to certain outstanding principles involved in the event; it
is a smooth break in the soul record with respect to a whole class
of potential, the burgeoning neglect of which progressively builds a
magnetic charge placing great stress upon the Whole requiring
precipitous compensation.
(Note again: in a world where you "create
your own reality", this potential area of being needn't be taken into
account as everything is strictly a reflection of personal
commission i.e. what's explicitly thought, actively desired,
consciously believed etc.)
Since such general deficiency with respect to a given area of being
produces a massive potential for precipitating "experience"
involving just those gapped elements (therefore usually a jarring
experience), we may indeed be justified in concluding that such
doctrines as "you create your own reality" serve unwittingly to
irritate the probability of so eruptive an experience taking place.
Experiences "foreign" and out-of-left-field in nature do manifestly
characterize the things that sometimes befall us; they can't just be
"owned" by arbitrarily identifying some active or positive
thought-structure which by tortured interpretation can be teased
into disgorging some vague parallelism ("Oh yes, I must have gotten
that dysentery because of my dislike for Mexican architecture!").
It is, then, the standard of the Whole which weighs the balance of
thought and Rules on the quality of experience. As long as one is
taking an interpretive perspective on that whole which isn't
directly aligned with It, the resultant reflection of one's personal
self-estimates in the form of experience will resemble a maze of
fractionated mirrors, first one side and then the other of one's
total Presence being represented in the medium first the overt and
then the hidden phase of the overall figure being shown to view.
The converse implication of this, of course, is that only in
alignment and integral consonance with the Whole-value of Being may
Reality be accurately manifested through the medium of "personal
expression" for then there is no discrepancy between "personal" and
Universal, the perspectival "part" and the indeterminate Whole. It
is under this condition that the "impossible" can be manifested
(i.e. that which is self-evidently beyond the power of anyone to
"personally" manipulate or control).
-
Do you see then how AAA and
MT have accomplished this Impossible
thing under the noses of everyone?
-
How, despite the disbelief and
repeated double-take of the senses, the evidence of their
Thaumaturgy is persistently present no matter how many times one
blinks, unmistakable to anyone who'll simply look, smiling up right
in the public midst of the most avid concentration?
-
(i.e. the
"Lotto", where no one ever takes his gaze away from the shuffling
shells?)
-
Do you see how this has been an object demonstration, on an
inconceivable scale, of precisely that which Drummond Riddell (and
countless others for whom he implicitly speaks) has asked to know?
-
Do you see how indeed it succinctly and fantastically (indeed
absurdly!) demonstrates the "correspond and print out" reality
about which Mr. Riddell and others continue to be so concerned? (for
surely this literally prints out an identifiable correspondence,
hmmm?).
-
Do you see how it manifests for your general edification
(and education) the truth involved in the "Visualize-
Assert-Demonstrate", wishes-can-be-made-to-form principle as Mr.
Riddell expresses it, without affirming the inaccurate "you create
your own reality" thesis?
-
How instead it demonstrates inconceivable
efficacy and head-shaking puissance as expression of precisely that
true Initiatic formula of Being taught as precious extract of the
hard-won struggle characterizing every authentic Adept, i.e.
alignment and integral harmony with the Spiritual Whole?
For, understood in this way (and only in this way) it may be seen
that unimaginable effectiveness results when the expression of one's
"personal" will is not different than or removed from the
Spirit of
Divine Will, i.e. the Will to reveal Spirit as the Truth and
authentic character of everyone's illimitable Being. This means
that, in terms of "personal will", only the Spirit of the Teaching
Function remains. There is no will remaining in the repertoire of
"personal will" except that which expresses perfect alignment,
integration and identity with Divine Will. This is the Destiny of
everyone.
Therefore, when we say for example "AAA and MT" determined "they"
would make a Demonstration of the spiritual truth of Being that
would be visible to and identifiable by everyone in the least
receptive to it, such determination cannot be accounted a strictly
private decision nor can it be said to be independent of the Will of
the One. (In the same way that, where Drummond believes it was
strictly an act of "personal decision" to write MT his fateful
"letter-of-inquiry" serving as efficient point-of-departure of the
Demonstration he cannot really be confident of the "personal" Origin
of that impulse.)
It's for this reason such a Demonstration, where it truly shows the
"impossible" efficacy of an Awakened unity with Whole-Being Value
and Spiritual Intent, doesn't simply manifest as a "magic trick" no
matter how extraordinary. It is not just a pulling-of-rabbits out of
a velvet Topper, or providential holding of the winning ticket of
the Avatar Sweepstakes. Since such a conjuration comes about
as authentic Demonstration and Expression of awakened consonance
with Whole-being Value, it takes the inevitable form of a thorough
Teaching in Itself. It expresses in its very self-revelation the
principles and processes by which it appears; it demonstrates
through its own contents the Instruction of Spiritual Truth, rather
than the stage-illusion of "you create your own reality". As an
Expression inseparable from the Will-of-the-Whole (and, indeed,
enforcing that Will in its very Intent), it has embedded in all its
parts the give-away character and tell-tale identity of just that
Spiritual Presence, the tireless Being of the Teacher of Man.
One last word: contrary to unwarranted popular opinion, such
initiated alignment with the Will of Absolute Spirit-being does not
result in "working one's will unopposed". On the contrary, the very
presence of the Awakened Truth in the form of the Spiritual adept
has always generated immediate opposition; it has always "awakened"
a corresponding reaction from the collective ego's self-protective
slumber. This fact does not belie the Whole-being efficacy of that
"will" which is so aligned with the Totality. It simply means that
such opposition itself, having become part of the manifesting
pattern, incorporates as occasion of the Teaching Demonstration as
well in whatever form expresses through the "confrontation".
Initiated alignment of will with the creative Whole doesn't
guarantee "smooth personal circumstances"; on the contrary, look at
the story of every adept, examine the events surrounding the Masters
known to history.
Rather it ensures that such events will possess
the character of an authentic teaching-demonstration, to all who
have the Soul to see. It ensures the Will of the Whole is always
done, regardless the partiality and prejudice by which that Whole
may be perceived in any given case.
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