you see the problem is this
we identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us
we have a certain number of actions that we define as voluntary we feel in control
of those and then over against that there is all those things that are involuntary
but the dividing line between these two is very arbitrary because for example when you
move your hand you feel that you decide whether to open it or to close it
but then ask yourself how do you decide when you decide to open your hand do you
first decide to decide you don't do you you just decide and how do you do that
and if you don't know how you do it is it voluntary or involuntary
let's consider breathing
you can feel that you breathe deliberately you can control your breath
but when you don't think about it it goes on is it voluntary or involuntary
and so we come to have a very arbitrary definition of self that much of my activity which i feel i do
and that then doesn't include breathing most of the time it doesn't include the
heartbeats it doesn't include the activity of the glands it doesn't include digestion
it doesn't include how you shape your bones
circulate your blood do you or do you not do these things
now if you get with yourself
and you find out that you are all of yourself
very strange thing happens you find that your body knows that you're one with the universe
in other words that the so-called involuntary circulation of your blood is one continuous
process with the stars shining if you find out that it's you who circulates your blood
you will at the same moment find out that you are shining the sun
because your physical organism is one continuous process with everything else that's going on
just as the waves are continuous with the ocean your body is continuous with the total energy
system of the cosmos and it's all you only you're playing the game that you're only this bit of it
but as i tried to explain there are in physical reality no such things as separate events
isn't it doesn't it really astonish you that you are this fantastically complex thing
and that you're doing all of this and you never had any education in how to do it
you never learned but you're this miracle
well the point is that from a strictly physical scientific standpoint this organism
is a continuous energy with everything else that's going on and if i am my foot i am the sun
only we've got this little partial view we've got the idea that no i'm just something in this body
the ego that's a joke the ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention
it's like a radar on a ship the radar on a ship is a troubleshooter is there anything in the way and
conscious attention is a designed function of the brain to scan the environment like a radar does
and note for any trouble making changes but if you identify yourself with your troubleshooter
then naturally you define yourself as being in a perpetual state of anxiety
and the moment we cease to identify with the ego and become aware that we are the whole organism
you realize as the first thing how harmonious it all is
because your organism is a miracle of harmony all this thing functioning together even those copper
schools and uh creatures that are fighting each other in the bloodstream and eating each other up
if they weren't doing that you wouldn't be healthy
so what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at a higher level and you begin to realize
that and you begin to be aware too that the discords of your life in the discords of people's
life which are a fight at one level at a higher level of the universe are healthy and harmonious
and you suddenly realize that everything that you are and do
is at that level as magnificent and as free of any blemish as the patterns in waves
the markings in marble the way a cat moves and that this world is really okay
and can't be anything else because otherwise it couldn't exist
so then if you awaken from this illusion
you can feel yourself not as a stranger in the world not as something here on probation
not as something that has arrived here by fluke but you can begin to feel your own existence
as absolutely fundamental what you are basically
deep deep down far far in is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself
so in this idea then everybody is fundamentally
the ultimate reality not god in a politically kingly sense but god in the sense of being the
self the deep down basic whatever there is and you're all that only you're pretending you're not
you