| Home Posts | Copyright 2017, Randy Strauss |
I began taking some fascinating courses from a place called WEA in late 1985. After the first course, "The Forum", I took seminars, inexpensive 10-session courses over about 3 months where one could study ones life in the context of the seminar, discover limits and break through them.
I first experienced the unity of the universe in a course called the 6-day in, I think, 1986. It was during a lesson about Sysiphus and the seeming futility of life.
I experienced it several times over the six days, and then a couple of times after the course ended. All of the things in the world and all of the meanings that I experienced, even my own personality and those of all the people I knew became changing data points among limitless axes. It was wonderful, seeing everything collapse into a vibration in the infinite dimensions of the universe. The vibrations of everything meant nothing, yet all meaning sprang from their stimulation of my brain. I experienced the entire universe oscillating between the rich world we know and infinite vibration. From the formed to the formless, and back again, my interpretation of the universe pulsed, winking into and out of existence. The experience was a profound and deep awe, connectedness, and love.
Soon after, I began dating a woman who was into Siddha Yoga. Siddha Yoga is a spiritual yoga led by a teacher who is of a chosen lineage that goes back a couple of hundred years. ("Siddha" means something like "Saint", so it's about learning from a teacher who has reached a kind of perfection.) The last guru, Baba Muktananda, wrote the story of his spiritual journey in a book, The Play of Consciousness, and brought their teachings to the west. I wasn't a believer, but enjoyed the talks by his recent successor, Gurumayi Chitvilisananda.
I joined my girlfriend at some meditation and chanting evenings. I was a bit uncomfortable with the chanting, but participated. And I meditated some. Twice I visited the ashram in Oakland. The second time, I was given shaktipat - the awakening of the kundalini, the "god-energy" within, by Gurumayi.
Then I took my friend's advice and signed up for their nearly free 4-year correspondence course- I think I payed a few dollars for postage. It was created by Ram Butler, via the inspiration of Baba Muktananda. Ram later left Siddha Yoga and continues to offer the course independent of Siddha Yoga, It's now called, The Truth of the Present Moment.
Baba wrote several books, as well. In them, and the course, he described how form arose from the formless. From nothing, something. Then dark and light arose. Then matter and space, heat and cold, more and more distinctions bifurcating the universe into the richness that it is today. It dovetailed perfectly with my experiences of unity, appreciating more and more dimensions till the universe is a uniform, infinite pattern.
I was supposed to read one 10-page chapter of the correspondence course every day for half of a month, then the next chapter. Often I'd read a paragraph or a page or a few pages, and then drift off into an incredible reverie... I asked my girlfriend about it- she said if I stuck with it, whatever happened was perfect. Over the years, I saw the play of my ego, my personality, my wants and needs, the workings of my brain and thoughts as distinct from my consciousness. I achieved enlightenment
Yes, that's weird to say. It doesn't give me knowledge of the stock market and it didn't deepen my mathematics abilities. A large part of it is knowing that I'm not Randy Strauss, I'm the actor playing that part. It also lets me accept "what is." Being some-kind-of-brilliant, I already knew I was full of shit, as are we all- human, limited and with a distorted view of a tiny corner of the universe. But it made me more able, I think, to accept a wide range of truths.
The truth is that the universe is real, but its true nature is beyond us. After all, if you made a trillion boxes and put a trillion atoms into every box, you'd have about a pound of matter. The true, huge complexity of everyday life is invisible to us. Where we see a person or the sky or a rock is really just countless particles vibrating.
Since we're simple beings (relative to what a god might be), our illusions give us power. Instead of living in a world much too complex for us to comprehend, we live in a simpler one that we can manage, albeit imperfectly. The world we experience emerges from our interpretations of our perceptions, rather than being "real" in some absolute sense. But our interpretations are vast simplifications of the complexity of the world.
I am beyond ego. (Sorry, I just wanted to see what that looked like in print...) The truth is that I can be beyond ego at will. But it requires will to see how powerfully ego is operating within me.
It's a bit like breathing. To center yourself for a performance, it's good to focus on the breath. But to perform, one must give oneself to the performance.
Do you know the old prank about psyching out a batter by asking, "Do you breathe in or out when you hit the ball?" What works is to pay attention to the ball when you're batting, not to be aware of your breath, and especially not to be aware of your thoughts about yourself.
A common exercise when meditating is to focus on your breath. Partly, this is to focus the mind and let go of being your ego. But also, it's to have a sharp contrast between what you intend to be doing and where you "go" when your thoughts take you away. For a week, months, or even years, meditation seems like an endless lack of true meditating- concentrating on my breath and then realizing a few minutes later that I was lost in my thoughts again. Over time, one gets better at letting the thoughts drift past, and finally, training the brain to let them cease entirely. Note that I've experienced these phases, and have some mastery of noticing my thoughts, but am not proficient at meditating.
Part of my enlightenment is a deep understanding of my body and brain as a weird, complex, error-prone machine. It also gives me a deep humility.
The truth about being "beyond" something is that you see "it". For instance, I'm beyond racism in that I see how I'm racist. When I talk with a black woman, I can see how my brain knows all the stereotypes about black women and is trying to apply them. And, of course, for other races, and people with accents or imperfect English, or speech different from mine. And for white women, too, and men, and tall men and short men. And fat people, and on and on.
To counter these thoughts, I create an interpretation where a person is just a soul that thinks it's the person it's inhabiting. It's trying to live its body's life. It thinks its values are real values, its meanings are real meanings, its aspects are really about it. It doesn't realize that its character is not really itself.
What makes me "beyond ego" is that I live in a reality where my ego is frequently visible. I adopt an interpretation where I'm the soul experiencing life though this body of mine, and experiencing thoughts and meanings through this brain of mine.
People often think I'm "spiritual." Most people think of it as a compliment, which ego loves. I like it, too, when I'm my character.
But I'm not spiritual in most senses. To me, "spirit" doesn't exist in the world of things. Enlightenment, and being with the unity of everything is awesome. But it is neither mystical nor spiritual. To me, it's profoundly rational.
I understand why it hits people as spiritual.
At every level of existance, tens or thousands or millions, billions or even trillions of things arrange themselves according to their "forces". Some like to say, "according to their nature." They form patterns. The patterns that are stable persist. The patterns that reproduce multiply. It's just their nature.
And the world of those multiplied patterns is a different world from the world of their parts. Each is a pattern more complex than its parts. They're connected more complexly and influence each other differently. If you look at our sciences, at each level we have a completely different science devoted to studying it. Particle physics for particles, then atomic physics, then molecular and then chemistry, material science, and various forms of engineering. The sciences of life, biochemistry, biology, anatomy and medicine have a similar hierarchy. So do the brain sciences all the way to psychology and then interpersonal and societal...
We've done a pretty wonderful job of studying the worlds of the parts that make up our world, and their parts, and down and down, even below the world of quarks to string theory where there's no real "stuff", just concepts. But we've barely scratched the surface going the other way, upwards, looking at the patterns we form with others. What's fascinating to me is not so much the patterns we form, but the patterns we're capable of forming. Using our wills, together, we can cooperate in ways we barely dream of, creating patterns and effects that we design.
This way of looking at the world is not usual, not mundane. It gives a view of the world that makes it not personal, not about me, creating a bit of freedom from the petty, personal considerations of myself as an individual. When people think of transcending their petty, personal, mundane lives, they think of people who are either consumed by a particular passion or commitment, or are spiritual.
In the world of Judism, Christianity and Islam, God created the world. Then goodness is created by humans choosing to cooperate with God's wishes and/or laws.
In Siddha Yoga, the world emerges, it is created, out of consciously formed distinctions.
In the world of science, the world is created out of things interacting within a layer which creates the next layer.
Could it be that Creativity is the theme of our universe?
I'm not saying God is Creativity, but if there was a creator, could it be that His/Her purpose for us is to purposely design the patterns that we, together, create?
The complex. Not only can it be understood on many levels, but it can be felt, and related to on many levels and through many dimensions.
I think this perspective seems "spiritual," to people.
In the background of all these experiences, I was working as a Computer Scientist. On my resume I put: Software Engineer. Day to day, I worked as a: Programmer. But the experience was one of constant oscillation between typing and thinking, doing and problem-solving.
Programming, for me, is very humbling. I was constantly striving to improve the software, either make it do more, make it better- more flexible and easier to understand- or make it more correct by fixing bugs. It was often good enough for our current goals, but rarely good enough for me.
Plus, there were always bugs, whether they were mistakes or areas where how it was used wasn't well understood. I worked mostly with the user interface, the windows and key strokes and mouse movements and clicks that commanded the application. This was a constantly changing and growing area, so the system software had bugs and limits and was different on different machines (I worked most of this time on a desktop publishing app on Unix workstations of different varieties.)
So besides being frequently faced with my own bugs, I was constantly striving to understand more and find better solutions.
Back to my story. After attaining some mastery of enlightenment, I returned to WEA courses. Exploring more of my ego and personality, I discovered I couldn't get married, due to various ideas I had acquired as a child. They were the ideas of a young, easily mistaken child, then adolescent, then teenager. And many of the notions about myself were formed in the few instances when I was deeply upset.
Even when adults told me things about myself, it was a young easily-mistaken person who was interpreting them.
In general, I was lonely and deep down, thought of myself as unworthy, despite a middle-class upbringing and overwhelming success in school. I had had about 10 girlfriends. While I loved and cared deeply for them, the moment we stopped interacting the loneliness and unworthiness would resurface. I realized I had not married any of those girlfriends because they didn't make me feel good about myself.
So I let that go, and found a good woman to fall in love with. After she did the basic WEA course, we proceeded to the next stage of existance- marriage in 1990, and fatherhood began in 1992. This doesn't mean it was smooth or easy. She had plenty of her own wants and ideas about life and meaning. I struggled to adapt.
Enlightened people tell a story: A man achieved enlightenment in a Zen monastery and then went back to the city to resume his life. Two years later he returned to his master and begged, "Master! I had such eternal peace and happiness here, but life in the city is a constant challenge, full of upsets and problems, even misery and suffering. How can I live in the city with peace?"
His master was very wise. She replied, "How should I know? I live here, in the monastery."
My enlightenment was always available as a refuge, but the world was challenging, especially my wife and kids. One year I even had depression! I didn't take it seriously, but I was effected (even a zen master must recover after breaking a leg.) After six months, I discovered the root of my depression, and it disappeared.
In late 2007 I returned to the courses (I'll skip the drama that brought me back to them.) Shortly after I was married, in 1991, the organization that gave the courses had been given to the course leaders and was renamed to Landmark Education, which was later changed to Landmark Worldwide. They had done wonderful things with the courses in my 17-year absense.
This time, I saw that most of the teachings of Siddha Yoga were there, just rewritten for the west. And they had more- they had applied the lessons to the challenges of life. In those courses, I integrated my enlightenment into life.
Life was often still vexing and challenging, but less so. It's like a child learning to walk, and then run. As you become more able, you can go faster and handle rougher terrain. Yet even on skates and skiis, there's no end to the challenges.
I took courses for four years, including re-taking The Forum and the Advanced Course, and more. And then took the Wisdom Course, in five 3-day weekends over the course of 10 months.
In the first weekend of the Wisdom Course I discovered something strange in my attitude, which turned into a huge adventure. I've made tons of progress, with almost nothing to show for it, so far...
You can read more about that, and how PeopleCount formed, in another article. But PeopleCount has proven to be a whole new level of challenge. I've taken on changing the whole world beginning with our culture. I didn't do it on purpose, but I now see a new possibility for humanity.
As Jews say, "If not me, who? If not now, when?" I've seen a future of much more than salvation. Am I not responsible for building it?
The answer, of course, is "no". Life is meaningless. It's all created by us in every moment, including responsibility. Mostly, we create the same old life over and over again. It often seems like we need to survive. We need more money because I want to vacation in Hawaii. Or my wife wants to travel. Or she needs a new car, or needs to do a big home-repair project after 20 years. The kids need to attend college and then grad school. The dog needs to go to the expensive veterinarian, and we need to put money away for retirement, and of course pay another $10k/year in property taxes.
Am I responsible for fixing the world? "No!" says our culture. One should think globally, but only act locally. Doing otherwise is ludicrous, unless you're in politics. While we decry politicians even more than lawyers, we insist that they are the best suited for leadership. And you can't be in politics unless you start in your community and work your way up.
I love people. Being enlightened, I know that all the barriers to love are of my own creation. In a moment I can drop them all and love everyone fully. Suffering is a choice.
I once slammed a finger in a garage door. I was racked with pain. My knees began to buckle. I struggled to get inside, got ice from the freezer into a big cup, added water, plunged my finger in and then let my knees buckle. The pain was overwhelming, but I quickly detached myself from it and avoided suffering. I had the pain, but the pain didn't have me.
Most people have no choice but to suffer. Choice is one of those things that's completely invented. So if you don't know you have it, you don't. People can learn, but that's a time-consuming process. And time is money- most people can't afford the search, curiosity, and to find the teacher that works for them. Plus, lots of people don't seem to learn very well.
With PeopleCount, I looked at my love and compassion. I looked at my finances and my lack of support among family, friends and even the people in my seminars. And then I set them aside and made a choice.
I chose that my purpose is to transform politics and government so humans can self-govern themselves well, that is, democratically, responsibly, carefully and effectively.
One of the fundamental parts of wisdom is not-knowing. Following the Wisdom course is another course called Partnership where one studies knowing, and much more. (Parnership is six 2-day weekends over 10 months.)
It was like, having mastered walking, running, skiing and numerous other kinds of physical adventures, entering on a boat and sailing into the sea- exploring both a new universe as well as gaining a new view of what I knew as the edge of the "known" universe.
PeopleCount has been a whole new level of adventure. I've needed to work hard in areas where my poor ego (my character) was completely unprepared and unable. And I've failed- in more ways than I could have imagined.
Still the solution is sound. While it's approachable only by the most open 1% of people I've met, it will work. Currently, government is mediocre and politics is horrid. PeopleCount will provide a new foundation atop which they can work well.
I say that God, though unknown and unknowable, is on my side. But the devilish status quo has inculcated many minds. The path is fraught with obstacles, and most people say it's impossible.
I am committed to create this future. While it's far from certain, it's worthwhile.
And after all, so far, only I have been chosen. If not me, who?
The only real reason to back down is if I'm too small. Yet humans create "size". Usually we use our judgement. Yet, even if one is "too small", one can "rise to the occasion." Since I say I'm responsible, I'm also responsible to become whatever is needed.
Coincidentally, PeopleCount is a method by which all of us can create the future together. Perhaps it's appropriate that I must first create me, and it...
The gist of enlightenment is to realize one is not the character that one seems to be. Each of us is the actor, creating our character.
While God may have created the soul, each of us, with the help of our parents and communities, created our own character. And each of us re-creates it, moment by moment, and can change it, shrinking from, or rising to, the challenges.
And perhaps, this may be humanity's ultimate purpose, to fulfill our role in truly being the "image of God", with respect to creating.
Just as God does not create your character, God did not create our nations. Humans created them with their actions and their agreement. And we actually continue to create them, together.
Similarly, we create others as us "us" or "them", one nation, allied nations, peaceful neighbors or enemies.
So perhaps there are 3 steps:
At its core, PeopleCount is merely a way we can communicate with each other to responsibly create our politics and design our futures. Instead of being a distant bureaucracy, government can simply be how we work together to build that future.
Currently, our political structures are failing in new and extreme ways. And currently, our environment is near to collapse with climate change.
So this is no time to listen to my ego argue for being reasonable and staying small...
Much love,
Rand Strauss, Jan 23, 2017 (Updated Nov 15, 2019)