Skipping flat rocks across the water was a favorite pastime growing up. We lived on a river or lake most of the time. Minnesota is like that. Now, I see and watch where the thoughts take me instead.
I found science fiction was a covert way to read existential books. Five well-known examples are "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick, "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, "The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells, and "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley.
Then I found Hermann Hesse, Satre, and Camus and noticed nobody else noticed.
"Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object." - Hermann Hesse.
"Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat." - Jean-Paul Sartre.
"The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone." - Albert Camus.
Existentialism is a tool; a perspective positing existence precedes meaning. Standing in THAT clearing for just a moment is ecstasy, by the way. Another way to say it is to view life as though life has no [built-in] meaning [except for what you say], and it has no meaning that there is no meaning. OF COURSE, this isn't true. It is a construct, a point of view to see things as they really are for the first time. [Every time] You may always go back to your normal, beaten into you construct.
Can I formulate a question, the asking of which is empowering? So that I'll be willing to stay in the question? That I will BE in the question over time. [IN is essential] It has taken a long time to see when I fail to separate mySelf from the three stooges, the stooges running that inquiry on an infinite loop leads to upset with me and others out there.
"The truth is that everything worth knowing is going to violate what you know." – Werner Erhard.
"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." - Henry Ford.
Do we attract the thoughts we grab hold of? Can we adjust ourSelf as the attraction? After decades of my good fortune occurring accidental, I was introduced to Werner Erhard.
"I'm starting to talk like people don't talk, because I want access to what concerns me that people don't have. So you and I are starting to invent a language that gives us access to the things that are interesting, or important, that concern us in life. It's not your thought. I want you to start to think that it thinks you. You have the thoughts like you get wet in the rainstorm. I'm just asking you to begin to think in a way you haven't thought before. The kind of person you are is given by that thinking, which isn't your thoughts or your thinking." …
"I'm going to shut up and you're going to stop thinking."
(pausing for about fifteen seconds)
"You didn't make it, did you? Nobody ever does, because it's not you thinking. If you were thinking then you could stop thinking. It is thinking, and you are having the thoughts it thinks. Which is true? The old way of saying it or the way I said it? That's not the point. I told you, I don't know the truth. I'm saying there's something empowering about this, in the recognition that you don't think. Like: "Hmm. I'm not thinking. It's thinking, and I'm having those thoughts." What comes up when you think this way is the possibility of actually thinking. Thinking is a process independent of those thoughts. Thinking is something like sitting with, or more precisely something like dwelling in. It's not like figuring it out. You see, I asked you to dwell in the possibility that it's not you thinking." …
"I think all there is, is having thoughts. But there are certain things that if you stand in front of them in a certain way, give you thinking. If you stand in front of things worthy of thought you get thinking. Thinking is a dance with that about which you are thinking. When you stand in front of questions worthy of thought, you get thinking. Now that's tough, because we're in the rainstorm called "I think."…"
"That's not you thinking. The stuff going on in your head is not yours. It doesn't belong to you. You didn't invent it, or generate it. It's thoughts you're having. I want you to be able to think that what's going on when you're thinking is not you thinking. You're having thoughts. It thinks. I'm having the thoughts it thinks. In the book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat—there was such a man—he actually thought his wife was a hat. And you mistake it thinking for you thinking."
"Not you personally. People mistake it thinking for them thinking just like the guy who mistook his wife for a hat. You have to do some thinking to get that. It thinks, and you have the thoughts that it thinks. You want to stop being so entangled in your thinking. You want to be able to stand back a bit and watch it think. You think you're limited to what it thinks. But that's it thinking. It has thought you into a lot of pain and suffering, unhappiness, and dissatisfaction. And it has a purpose, like a machine. It is designed in-order-to. It is not designed in order to leave you with love, fulfillment, and full self-expression. Have you got any idea what it's designed in-order-to? It's designed in order to make you look good. That's its design function."
"And it uses thinking and feeling, interpretations, what you believe to be true, in order to make you look good. It utilizes and organizes those elements and generates those elements in a form designed to make you look good. What does it mean to look good? Well, specifically, it means to make you right and others wrong, to foster your dominating and to avoid the domination of anything else. And it uses your thinking and your feelings, and your perceptions and your interpretations, conclusions, etc., to justify yourself; except yourself and it have become one. You have identified with it. You are an it; you are an anybody. What makes you an anybody is you identify with it. You identify with its thinking and its feeling, and that makes you an anybody, and the costs are love, happiness, and self-expression. It thinks and you have its thoughts, and it thinks in order to make you look good, and what it costs you to identify with it is love, happiness, vitality, and self-expression." – Werner Erhard.
Forty-plus years of listening, being with, and reading Werner, I pulled the previous quotes out of the files I created, ordered them in a way to generate in me, 'Having thoughts is not thinking' and experience it at my core again newly. I see IT as mind now, the three stooges: ego, monkey mind, and lizard brain. Are egos of the world connected somehow? Is Satan just a metaphor for ego?
Momentum and effortlessness are the same to me. I do not notice either one while they happen, but they are explanations from after they end. What comes after the drive to the top of the roller coaster? Some believe momentum and effortlessness come after effort. I say not. My quest is effortlessness every step of the way. Ego says it is not possible. Self knows it is so.
When the inevitable, a kind of breadcrumb, appears every step of the way, accomplishment leads the way. When the inevitable disappears, wait. She will reappear. What messes it up, what causes its disappearance, is ego making it mean something or something about me. The breadcrumbs disappear for me when the three stooges act in three-part harmony loud enough for everyone near me to hear, or so it seems. The clearing closes, the breadcrumbs disappear, and the world goes 2D.
STOP and wait for the racket to quiet. If I pay full, focused attention to my immediate surroundings, the world goes 3D again. Time slows, the stooges stop their antics, the breadcrumbs appear, and the clearing opens. BEING only sometimes attends, however.
I am seriously interested in being present with BEING. Being present, unfettered by past, future, or any other thought, is relatively simple. The most recent is as exhilarating as the first time. Finding ways to step into now, moment to moment, has life sparkling and glimmering the entire time. Time nearly stops while, to an observer, I'm very adept at accomplishing complex to impossible tasks. It is not me moving differently, but time slows around me. The world shimmers: no thoughts appear, just joy. BEING enters at times. How must I Be for more of BEING, or is my noticing the issue? Is it something else?
"Nowhere among things do we find being. Every thing has its time. But being is not a thing, is not in time. Yet being as presencing remains determined as presence by time, by what is temporal." - Martin Heidegger.