How Things Exist in the World

“Things exist in the world not in and of themselves. They are dependent upon their parts”
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama

When we think of things in this world, we think of them as we see them. A tree is a tree. A house is a house. A car is a car. We see things as what we have named them.

But this is not how they exist in the world.

The Buddhists have a concept they used to describe the existence of things. It’s called Dependant Arising.

Dependant Arising says that nothing exists inherently. That is to say that an object is depended upon the parts that make it up. So the tree isn’t a tree in and of itself. It’s dependent upon its parts to exist as a tree. There are many things that make up a tree. The bark, leaves, roots and wood come together to make a tree. The same is true for every object in the material world and in most cases in the metaphysical world as well.
Take any object and apply Dependant Arising to it. Look at a house and see all of the things and people that had to come together to make it come into existence. The wood, the nails, the concrete, the metal, the wiring, the paint, the people who had to put it together.
Look at the computer monitor you are viewing this on right now and see all the parts and processes that were required to make it exist as it is.
Your body is made up of several complex systems that are required for you to live each day but they can’t exist without the parts that make them up and you can't exist without them.
You can take even the smallest thing and see that it has parts that it depends on for existence. An atom requires neutrons, protons and electrons to exist.
Nothing in the material world exists in and of itself. It is dependent on other things to make it exists as we know it.

Matter explained:

The body has arms, hand, legs, feet, a head, that is to say, the body is made up of parts. And then everything is connected and united by skin, muscles, tendons, veins, arteries, blood, etc. We know that, like all the rest of matter, these components of the body are composed of molecules, atoms and particles ever smaller and smaller.
Seen with normal eyes the body is a single solid thing, but scientists tell us that it’s just an illusion, that the body, like everything else in the universe, is more air than matter. The space between the nucleus of the atom takes up thousands of times more area than the semi-substantial electrons that orbit that nucleus of protons and neutrons (an atom is 99.999999999999% air). In the same way, the molecules formed by the atoms contain mostly air. None of the parts that make up the body are touching each other. They are kept more or less in their positions by non-material forces—electromagnetism and other energy forces. When you move your arm, you think that the arm moves from one place to another and that’s it. What’s really happening is that you’re dragging molecules, atoms and particles from one place to another and it’s a chain reaction, not all are moving at the same time or the same speed—bit’s similar to a movie projected at a very slow speed. Normally we don’t see this phenomenon because we live in a different time reference or time frame, than matter. Actually, everything that exists is moving continuously but we don’t see it, we see everything as solid and static. The movement we see is only the grossest aspect of movement.


There are only a very few things that exist inherently. The Source, or God exists inherently because it can’t be broken down any further. Love, joy and peace exist inherently in the metaphysical world because it can’t be broken down any further. Most everything else is dependent upon parts to exist.

Lao Tzu, the author of the Tao Te Ching was asked the question; "What is real"?

Lao Tzu responded "That which is real never changes"

Every text on the subject of reality and existence come to this conclusion. The only things that are truly real never change.

There is a very good audio book that explores this Depandant Arising in depth written by the His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.

“How to See Yourself as you Really Are” http://www.audiolibra.com/Title.aspx?titleId=6004

This audio book is read by Jeffrey Hopkins, PH.D who served for a decade as the interpreter for the Dalai Lama. This book explores Dependent Arising on every level and teaches mediations on the subject.
I found this book to be every enlightening.

Dependent Arising Practice:

Find a cup. Observe it not as a cup, but as its parts coming together to make the cup. The clay that was once part of the ground. The hands that mounded it into its shape. The fire that solidified it. The paint that covers it. The space inside the cup that makes it useful. If you want, you can go even deeper and picture the molecules that bind the parts together, or picture the atoms that are required to make each part of the cup.

This can be done with any object in the world. Everything is made up of parts and that is how it exists to us. You can do this not just with objects, but with other things too. Problems can be viewed that same way. The problem exist becasue of the parts that make them up. Seeing this and knowing it allows you to solve the problem much easier and faster and to even make the problem go away all together.

This is the first stage of Enlightenment. Seeing the world (including yourself) as not existing inherently but dependent upon parts for existence. When you can see everything as coming into being by its parts you can see the world and yourself as you truly are.

What are your thoughts? What are your comments?

The Mind and Coming into Existence

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there”.

- Jalal ad-Din Rumi

The question is always asked. If we from this energy source, does that mean we already existed (past lives)? The answer always seems to be the same.

The paradoxical yes and no.

The body that we have during this life is only temporary. It is born and grows and it returns to the earth from which it came (Ashes to ashes, dust to dust). All things are in this state of transition. The mind however is not of the material world, so it is not bound by the rules of physical limitations. Thoughts are energy and energy is what the Source that creates all things is.
So while the body returns to the earth, the conscious returns to the Source.

Now that we know where we came from and what connects us (The Truth about Coming into Existence), what makes us different? If we come from the same source, doesn’t that me we are equal in that source?

This is where it gets pretty deep, so you may have to read this a couple of times to understand it.

The mind, or conscious is something of a mystery. It is like the Source. It can’t be detected with any of the five senses, but we know it’s there. It allows us to think and dream and solve problems and write books, and cook meals and change the TV channel and countless other things, but we can’t grasp it and hold onto it. We can’t put it into a box and mail it off.

We were born with it and we know it grows and expands with coming into physical existence.

Remember when you were young and everything was a new experience. Your mind was like a sponge. It would pick up on everything and learn from it (this will be discusses further in another post). But as you got older and learned more things, it seems that ability to learn the way you did when you were young, gets weaker and weaker.

This is not a byproduct of age.

This as an effect of ego.

Once we allow our ego to posses and control our minds, we fall into complacency with the belief systems we have created.

From the Tao

Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.
Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.

– Tao Te Ching (verse 9)

The one thing that separates us from our Source and from each other is ego. Ego is the belief we develop over our years of existence in the material world that we are “not” connected. Rather the ego is all about “me and I”

We are born with ego and we develop it as we go through life. It’s, simply put, a belief that “I” exist to serve “my” needs and wants.

We are taught at a very young age to be better than everyone else, be faster than everyone else, to make more money than everyone else. We are told to believe in certain things, laws, abilities and outcomes. We are taught that our own plight is more important that anyone else’s and that our beliefs are better than everyone else’s. When we grow with these beliefs in our minds, we become attached to them. Soon, these beliefs’s become truths in our minds and we are reluctant to let go of them. The danger is that once we let ego take control of our thoughts, we lose the ability of free thinking and creativity.

The ego is what separates us from our Source and in turn, from each other. We believe we are different. We use the five senses to evaluate the world around us and we let our ego judge it. This detaches us from our Source and from each other.

This and only this is what makes us different.

There is a quote from an unknown author that says:

Watch your thoughts, for they become words
Watch your words, for they become actions
Watch your actions, for they become habits
Watch your habits, for they become character
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

If driven by ego, this destiny can be a lonely one. If driven by love, it can be an abundant one.

But you first have to understand the way this source works.

The Source, or God, or the Spirit didn’t make “special” people, or “individuals”. Ego did. The Source created a life. If you think you are special or better than anyone else, you are saying that this source plays favorites.

The Source doesn’t play favorites. It creates all things equal and allows it to grow on their own and return when are finished here

We are not our names or social security numbers or the body we are in. We are not our race, color, creed, religion, job, status in society or our country. We are nothing that is of the physical world.

We are our minds. We are the thought of who we are.

But because many of us lead with our egos, if we cannot see it, touch it, taste it, feel it or hear it, we act like it isn’t there.

Furthermore, what we choose to do with mind is what makes up our character. We can chose to let our egos control it or we can choose to control it ourselves.

That is free will.

The single more important choice you can make is choosing between ego running you life or letting your spirit run it. Ego is disconnection to the source and spirit is connecting to the source.

But don’t think that you have to let go entirely of the ego to restore your connection to the Source. That is impossible. We can’t exist without ego.
But we can shift ourselves to an awareness that is not controlled by our egos. This will be covered in a later post.

What are your thoughts? What are your comments?

The Truth about Coming into Existence

“We are not human being’s having a spiritual experience. We are Spiritual beings having human experiences”
– Dr Wayne Dyer. PhD Social Psychology.

Where did I come from? I think everyone who has ever lived has asked that question. Here is the answer as best as I can put it.

Around nine months or so before you were born, an egg and a sperm collided and you came into existence in the material world. All living things were created this way in some form or another.
My daughter says “ewwwwww”at this point every time I tell this story.

So there you are, inside your mother’s womb waiting to grow and be born.

Is that the beginning of existence? Is that all there is to the beginning of life?

Science has proved that there is infinitely more to the beginning of existence.

You couldn’t have just come from nothing. Scientific practices by the greatest minds on the planet have proven that matter cannot be created, nor destroyed. That means we must have had to come from somewhere before we were here. Conception is not the beginning of existence. It’s just the beginning of existence in the material world. But before that, we had to have come from something….and somewhere.

We know what happens when we go forward. We grow, we are born into the material world in a physical body, we live and we pass on (This process will be discussed in another post).

But that doesn’t tell us where we came from (or where we are going).

So let’s go backwards and see if we can’t find out where we came from. And to make this more factual, let’s do it scientifically.

If we examine the embryo further under a microscope we find molecules. We put that under and electron microscope and we find atoms. If we look deeper still we find atomic particles. Still deeper we find what the scientific community calls “quarks”. If we open up these quarks and examine them we find even smaller particles. If we place these subatomic particles in a particle accelerator and collide them at super high speeds to crack them open and then we open the particle accelerator, we find just an energy field. Just a field of energy that can’t be broken down any further. All things come into existence this way. From an energy field.

[Reference Quantum Physics (http://library.thinkquest.org/3487/qp.html)]

It’s nothing we can touch, see hear, smell or taste. It’s the same energy field that is in everything in the universe. It’s the same energy that holds the earth in orbit and moves the stars across the sky. Everything in the universe can be reduced to this energy field. And this energy filed cannot be created or destroyed. It has no beginning or end. It just is. Science proved it.

This not only shows that we are all created from this energy force, but we are part of a great intelligent system. From this energy field all things are created. The field organizes them into apples, or trees, or water or people or seeds or anything and everything.

So, it is safe to say that all of us and everything in existence came from this energy field. We can’t see it, but we know it is there. This is what science, religion and philosophy can agree upon and have been saying for thousands of years. It’s what I have discovered is the connecting principle in every sacred text and science paper I have read.

You are a part of this energy. Every cell in your body is connected to this energy source. Everything that has every existed, or will ever exist, will come from and return to this energy field.

Science calls it the Unified Field (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_unified_field_theory). Religion calls it God, or Spirit, or The Source. You may call it what you like.

This is the Source of all creation. It is the divine source that everything that has come to be was created from. It makes up the stars in the sky, the ground we walk on, the water we drink and the cars we drive. It is in everything we eat. It is in everything we can see. Everything that came into existence was created from this source.

Think of it this way. There is an endless ocean. We are but one drop of water from it. We go about our life, we are eventually evaporated, it rains and we return to the ocean from which we came. This is the lifecycle of the universe. It always has been and it always will be.

And this abundant source from which all things come from and which all things return never began and never ends. It doesn’t change form.

A poem by a great second century Sufi poet and philosopher, Rumi spoke of this in a poem called Unmarked Boxes:

Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round
in another form. The child weaned from mother's milk
now drinks wine and honey mixed.

God's joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,
from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flower bed.
As roses, up from ground.
Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,
now a cliff covered with vines,
now a horse being saddled.
It hides within these,
till one day it cracks them open

Part of the self leaves the body when we sleep
and changes shape. You might say, "Last night
I was a cypress tree, a small bed of tulips,
a field of grapevines." Then the phantasm goes away.
You're back in the room.
I don't want to make any one fearful.
Hear what's behind what I say.

There's the light gold of wheat in the sun
and the gold of bread made from that wheat.
I have neither. I'm only talking about them,

As a town in the desert looks up at stars on a clear night.

- Jalal ad’ Din Rumi

Understanding this, we can come to the conclusion that we are created from this source, we arrive in this world and when we pass on, we return to it. The body we have is nothing more than a vessel in which God has placed a piece of His energy in to walk in the material world.

During my studies I came across another poem that summarizes this concept:

Today I am a human
Yesterday I was a flower
Tomorrow I may be a grand oak tree
But I will always and forever be me.

All things come from and return to this source of energy. Whatever you call this source, it is divine, it is in all things in the universe, it connects to all things and all things are connected to it. It never began and it will never end.

Knowing how to use this connection can bring things into your life you only dream about and things you never would have dreamed in a million years. I will discuss this capability in another post.

This Sourse has many names. A thousand names. God, The Creator, The Source, The Unified Field, Allah, Krishna,….this list goes on.

This picture depicts the 1000 names of God.

We all came from this source and we will all return to it. This is the one timeless Truth in the Universe.

What are your thoughts? What are your comments?

The Truth About Awareness

All of man's trouble stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room……..alone - Blaise Pascal

I’ve been away for a while. Sitting in a room quietly. Looking at myself and the world around me and asking the questions that we all ask. Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?

Some of the greatest minds in the world have asked those questions. Man has looked in many places to find the answers. Only a few have ever found them. And the place they found these answers were not in some far away land, or hidden in some forgotten text. They are found within one’s self. Looking inward at the soul and learning from it.

I decided to take the journey that these enlightened beings who discovered these answers took. I sat quietly as they instructed and I discovered the same answers.

I studied with many great teachers, business leaders, spiritual icons, philosophers, metaphysics teachers, scientists and average people doing extraordinary things.

I discovered through these teachers that life is more than just “me” and what “I” want. It’s about needs and fulfilling the needs of others. I discovered through awareness that life is not to see how much money I can make, or if I can get the coolest job ever, or obtaining more and more things.
It’s about reconnecting to The Source of all things and being able to live life through that connection.

During my time away, I have read many books, essays, poems, songs, white papers and journals and listened to countless hours of lectures concerning this connection and its importance to all things.

The first book I read was the I Ching (Book of Changes). I studied the Tao – Te Ching and the Taoist teachings and texts, Confucius books and texts, Chinese sacred texts, like the Art of War, The Secret of the Golden Flower, The Doctrine of the Mean, and The Great Learning. I studied texts and writings from India including Buddha, The Way and poetry from Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi. I studied the Bible, the Qur’an and the teachings of the great religions of the world. I listened to hours and hours of lectures from self-help experts, professors, doctors, scientists and people who overcame the impossible.

I also studied modern writers, poets, philosophers, metaphysicians, physiologists and great thinkers.

But it wouldn’t have been complete if I didn’t study practical and rational sciences. So I read many books and papers on science, evolution, history, climate change and modernization.

What I discovered, and what I want to share with you in the blog is The Truth. The Truth backed up with scientific proof. I will provide no opinions or ideas. I will provide just facts about what this Source connection is and how it should be used in all of our lives. Then we can have discussions about them in the comment sections of each post.

I hope you learn something from these posts and I look forward to discussing them with you. See you in the comment section.

Mike