The Substance Beneath the Froth

[Ron Tocknell]

Reading many of the posts here and on similar sites, I have to say that I am left feeling a little like a small insect trapped in the froth of a very heady fluid.

I am in no doubt that something is brewing. Maybe it’s something that is going to occur in 2012, maybe not. I am a little wary of prophecies. I am wary of those who claim to know.

However, there has to be at least some fluid to whip up this much froth. I read and hear vague descriptions of The Ascension; I read and hear much about the Higher Plane and I read and hear accounts from those who claim to have been singled out to spread The Word.

But how much of this is just some Chosen One fantasy of a cosmic ego trip? How many of the numerous books and DVDs available on the subject contain anything of real substance beyond the vague froth of supposition and wish-fulfilment?

Throughout our history we have been obsessed with explanations for that which defies explanation for it is beyond our comprehension. Observation can show us that there is a complex order in what may appear to be chaos. Random chance and chaos are simply terms we use to describe that which conforms to rules we have yet to identify. They are convenient and dismissive explanations.

There have been many stories of Creation, which differ from culture to culture. Most describe a Supreme Being in the form of a person or an animal. This simply condenses the vast complexity of the very nature of existence down to something that can be understood by a life form that inhabits the surface of one speck within the infinite dust cloud we call The Universe.

Knowledge is power and, where knowledge fails us, we invent explanations. Yet how much of what we believe we know is simply an explanation to fill the voids within the scope of our comprehension, be it theological, metaphysical or scientific?

The reality is that a lifetime of study and learning cannot alter the inevitability of surrendering to the unknown.

The closer we look at anything, the more we discover is still beyond the scope of our observation. If there is a message here at all to read into this, it must surely be that, at some point, we must relinquish our need to know and surrender to the mystery of simply being.

There is considerable speculation about 2012. Some fear it may be the end of the world, many believe it will be a transition to another level of reality (which, in itself is so vague it barely qualifies as an explanation of anything) and some believe it will herald some cataclysmic event for which we must prepare or succumb to the consequences. Expectations are so high that the most terrifying prospect would be if nothing happened. How many would be prepared for that?

Somewhere beneath all this froth is a fluid of substance. What that is, we shall discover in due course. Naming it, describing it and preparing for it does not alter the inevitability that, when the froth finally settles, we must surrender to substance beneath.

[Jeanne]

I don't know... I am open to knowing, but don't know if the openness will lead to knowing... so... I still don't know.
In the meantime, I think I know its important to take in all I can, learn from it and leave it where I found it... cuz I can't take any of it with me... except maybe this consciousness that is being polished with being and nothingness.

When I lay in bed at night and ponder the day, the life... when I'm alone with my thoughts and inconsequential emotions (to anyone else), I'm sure that most of what I've done has been filler... not froth or substance. ...just filler... of the sort that I was taught to fill my life with.

Now that I've stepped away from much of that filler... and viewed it from a distance... and away from those who truly believe in the importance of filler... I still don't know... but I'm calmer, more in the moment, instead of creating froth... and occasionally, if only for a few seconds at a time... I experience substance.

I appreciate your writing Ron... and your provocative way of asking uncomfortable questions. I'm thinking that all that frothing is a distraction from the ever mysterious substance and the questionable truth of the filler. And yo on the wariness "of those who claim to know."

I have no doubt that some folks recieve varying messages from elsewhere... somewhere/something they are not able to interpret. So, in their/our not knowingness, attach filler to it... and give it a name... and if their indoctrinated as such... sell it to those seeking to know.
Which is why every spiritual leader I have ever been willing to learn from did not place a price tag on his knowingness. I figured if they were charging... then the cash flow is their way... their path. But if they are sincere and ask only for compensation according to the volition and ability of the student, then they have something that is transcendent or at least higher than the human systems of capitalism, corruption and cunning.

Still... if you're human... if you're living on planet earth... if you're also searching for knowing... if you think you know... you are the same as all others... you don't know... and are frothing about.

If 2012 brings catastrophic change... who will be the worse for it? Not the approximated 1 billion without suitable housing and 100 million totally homeless. Its not too difficult to figure that its the big foots of the world that will suffer... the ones whose eco-footprints are bigger than their foresight.

[Ron Tocknell]

I do, of course, appreciate knowledge. We benefit from the knowledge of others and, for my part, I absolutely love the fact that I can sit down in my little house in Gloucestershire and have a conversation with someone in their home in Oregon. Not quite the same as a bottle of wine and a fireside but close enough :o)

It is not so much the store we put on knowing as the fear we have of not knowing that concerns me. Among those who claim to know may well be those who actually do know. Among those who claim to convey messages from a higher source may well be those who genuinely are in touch with a source of Truth that few of us access... and yes. There are those who simply see an opportunity to make a few bucks along the way. The rest of us are anxiously seeking answers and trying to sort the substance from the dross.

How many of us, I wonder, experience the stillness you mention? For me, this remains an aspiration but I'm beginning to realise that it is not a process of accumulation (here, I include the accumulation of 'knowledge') but a process of surrender. To me, that's what faith is. I'm not talking about faith in the existence of an entity or faith in a desired outcome as these still involve some kind of knowledge or preconceived idea. I mean the faith to surrender to the unknown.

Of course, I'm talking from the point of view of one who is very much at the heart of all this thrashing about and looking for answers. I know most of us fear the unknown because I also fear the unknown. But I am aware that fear and attachments--particularly to knowing--are the real barriers to stillness.

I think you're right in that any catastrophic change would have the biggest impact on those with the most attachments to materialism... and I really wish I was genuinely above gleaning some satisfaction from that but I think I've some evolving to do first.

[Melanie Worman]

Just back from my holiday and I'm immediately drawn back into your new discussion Ron. I haven't even unpacked!

You may be right about the fantasy of the "cosmic ego trip" although all those books and DVDs etc., agree that part of the spiritual journey entails dropping the ego. I see the ego as a false identity which has been built on all kinds of experiences within the illusion that we call life.

You're so right that "faith is a process of surrender" and we should "surrender to the mystery of simply being". I remember being criticised by 'friends' when I became a hermit for 7 years. I tried to explain to them that I was simply BEING rather than DOING, but they had all known me as a 'doer' in the past and didn't understand the change.

I agree with you and Jeanne that we should be wary of "those who claim to know" but we shouldn't confuse that with our own inner intuitive knowingness. When I was about 12 years old I told my brother that I "knew" I had something very important to do in life and that was why I'd been born. Years later, in my thirties, I kept getting the word 'vanguard' and had to look it up in the dictionary. Now, I 'know' that I am part of the vanguard that has something very important to do over the next few years. Beyond that we shall wait and see. But if, as the books say, 'thought creates reality', then I prefer to envisage a future of a Paradise on Earth.

You may find this difficult to understand but I do not fear the unknown, I positively thrive on it! What I dislike intensely is the "filler" of life, the routine and predictable. When I descended into 'my void', part of the 7 years isolation, I had to confront my own shadow and acknowledge it, look it squarely in the eye. After that experience I was left with nothing to fear. I'm fascinated by how my spiritual path has unfolded and it's true to say I never know what's coming next. ...BRING IT ON!

If I am on a cosmic ego trip and nothing has happened (it's happening NOW - have you felt the new energies being downloaded?) by 2012 then I've instructed my daughter to have me locked up and declared insane.

With Love, Light and Froth XXX

[Lee]

I have always considered myself open to a point of never subscribing to anything except that which fit my goals. So it is now, and my goals of simplification and deepeer connection with humans need useful ways of coming into being. In the end I do not truly know that simplification or deeper connection are the right thing to do, I just know that it is right for me for now because it is in this process that I find fulfillment. In finding this fulfillment I need to communicate with other humans. The only way to do this is to assign a bunch of made up sounds and symbols that kind of point at the truth of what I want to convey, and I think this leads to a lot of confusion. The words, our main form of communicating thought, are not the thought, and are rather inadequate in conveying the thought, but so many of us get invested in the words instead oif the essence of the thought, which cannot really be conveyed. So invested in fact that we go over and over the thoughts and try to find better words to use to help us understand our own internal thought born without words. So, in the end we need to connect with others, but we are left essentially alone with our thoughts. Thoughts that we want validated by others so we assign substance to them with our choice of words, tone of voice, and body language. Because of this I have been working toward recognizing this need for validation whose existence I was skeptical of, be OK with my essential aloneness, and accept the thoughts I am given, consider their source, and act on the ones that feel useful. As for substance vs. froth, everything I communicate is froth, because I use words, the substance is mine, and you have yours. It is formiddable.

Ron,

On a side note, I have enjoyed very much the thoughts that are provoked by your words, and one such thought has been communicated above, as well as I can, in a short time with the only means available to me. Words, and not the best use of them.

Thanks for taking part in this place, if it is a place.

[Ron Tocknell]

"Just back from my holiday and I'm immediately drawn back into your new discussion Ron. I haven't even unpacked!"

Boy! Are these things ever the thief of time! That's what happens when you cross-breed a TV with a typewriter and add a telephone to the gene pool. We switch on and YAK YAK YAK YAK.

Regarding this fear of the unknown: On one level, I'm very much drawn to the unknown as, I think, are many people. That is to say that as long as it is anchored in a degree of familiarity. If I'm abroad, the first thing I do is deliberately get lost. I've always liked being geographically lost (which, with my sense of direction, is just as well). I like new experiences and get as excited as a child when I encounter something I've never encountered before. But this is always the unknown on a familiar level.

The first (and last) time I experimented with LSD was because of my youthful attraction to the unknown. Something somewhere within my experience of reality said "Oh. You want unknown, eh? OK. I'll give you unknown... cop this..." eight hours of the UNKNOWN was enough to convince me that there is unknown and UNKNOWN. What I had always thought to be a love of the unknown was just an attraction to novelty. I'm going to have to work on surrendering to the UNKNOWN.

This inner intuitiveness is not quite the same as intellectual knowledge. Sometimes we are drawn along in a particular direction without knowing why. In the same way that you sensed a path and associated it with the word 'Vanguard'. That was your inner knowing. Then you looked it up in the dictionary so your outer knowing could catch up. The difference between the knowledge gained from study and the knowledge born of intuition is like the difference between novelty and the UNKNOWN.

It's hard to say if I have felt new energies downloading. I certainly get a sense of 'something brewing' but I don't know how much of this is due the influences and stimuli around me. Everyone around me seems to be caught up in the 2012 thing so it's hard to ignore. But am I sensing energies independent of the cultural influences? I don't know.

By the way, I think your poor daughter declared you insane years ago. She just hasn't the heart to have you locked up... well, not until you start biting the postman on the leg anyway.

[Jeanne]

Lee said: "...The only way to do this is to assign a bunch of made up sounds and symbols that kind of point at the truth of what I want to convey, and I think this leads to a lot of confusion. The words, our main form of communicating thought, are not the thought, and are rather inadequate in conveying the thought, but so many of us get invested in the words instead oif the essence of the thought, which cannot really be conveyed."

You rock, Lee! ...and you also expressed why humans have such a difficult time getting along... semantics. I've spent a few years devoted to learning all I could about conflict resolution and nonviolent communication... and you summed it up in a few well-written sentences.

[Ron Tocknell]

You're absolutely right, Lee. We've had a few stumblngs over semantics in these and other threads. Even if I manage to find the words that, to me, convey my thoughts as clearly as I can, it depends on the reader to interpret the words exactly as I had intended. But we all interpret words and expressions differently. What I read is my mind's interpretation of a very inadequate interpretation of someone else's thoughts. The pure thought stays with the thinker. So yes. We are always alone with our thoughts. What we write is always processed and contrived in comparison.

[Lee]

Thank you Jeanne, that is just the validation I was looking for.he,he,he............................

On the occasion I go back later and read what I wrote (like a month or more later) it often confuses me, the author, which indicates to me that I desperately need to get out of my head and write more clearly. It seems like you understand most of what I write and I am happy for that.

Ron wrote: The closer we look at anything, the more we discover is still beyond the scope of our observation. If there is a message here at all to read into this, it must surely be that, at some point, we must relinquish our need to know and surrender to the mystery of simply being.

You hit the nail on the head. We don't know. We live by our rules that are right for us as we know ourselves and our world in that moment, but at the end of the day, when I lay down I realize once again that, I am, and that is all I know. This discussion reminded me of that at a time when I was once again trying to define things that I had decided I would quit trying to define some time ago. I still have my rules that get me through my days, and I will still likely refine, discuss, and employ them, but in the end they are only tools not knowledge. These rules, or tools are likely only as substanitive as the results they garner, but who judges the results? Oddly, the only judge can be the maker of the rule/tool. For instance, if believing 2012 will help me ascend to another level and I am more able to connect with humanity via that discussion, then maybe it is not the date but the discussion itself that drives that ascension process, in which case that belief, or rule has garnered a positive result, a self-fulfilling-prophecy so to speak. It may not occur as expected, but a useful belief none the less.

I just reread this and I am back to the opinion of, "Ah hell its all froth" (in a very discouraged tone). By the way I have a favorite theory but no actual opinion on 2012, but thought it made a good example.