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Matthew Catlett

How can we be happier? The answer seems to lie in self-examination, where you must choose a crafting table.

You can choose questions about work. Should you work more or less? Harder or more efficiently? Emphasize relationships or profit? Security or passion?

You can choose politics. Patriot or world citizen? Pro-establishment or independent? Democratic or Republican?

You can choose sexuality. Married or single? Straight or gay? Male or female? Chaste or promiscuous?

You can choose spirituality. Meditation or prayer? Faith or charity? Mysticism or dogma? Enlightenment or salvation?

Whatever you choose, you must next judge whether you are right or wrong. Then, you must judge your neighbor.

If we wander the world holding the binary myth aloft like a torch, we deal with hard choices with each step. Everyone falters when they see a world divided into merit and sin, good and bad, male and female, spiritual and worldly. Confronted by duality, it seems we must choose. Madness is when we believe we suffer because we have chosen unwisely, and the cycle of illusion appears when we congratulate ourselves after everything goes according to plan.

In truth, there is no division “out there” in the world. Duality is only perception. It is just the apparent tension of self-determination and the will of God. Looking at the world, we can choose a fractured mirror. Much suffering is the posing of unanswerable questions and insistence on answers. The answers are arbitrary. You choose the world by your questions. So ask new ones.

Why must people be right or wrong? Everyone is simply doing the best they can. Hold aloft a different torch and you soon see that everyone is expressing or requesting love with every action. The world of form is a roiling sea of love.

Why must we choose a religion? Faith and charity are different expressions of the same thing. Meditation and prayer are different ways of looking beyond the mirror. Christianity and Buddhism are different veils between divinity and time. Our torches simply cast different shadows on the same sea.

Why must our roles define our happiness? Relationships and politics are questions of identity. No matter what thoughts you try to set as bedrock in your mind, you will never truly be male or female, straight or gay, or a Democrat or a Republican. You are beyond all forms.

What is the difference between choosing work and family if you choose with the same heart? There is no election of work or questions about effort when work is worship. Such shadows only appear when you see by the binary myth.

How can we be happier? The question is nonsense. The root of your mind, the ground of consciousness, is love, light, and bliss. Even in grief and anger, it is so. The world will always be your mirror, but it does not need to seem fractured. Without the binary myth, the separation you have struggled against simply does not exist.

Matthew Catlett

Matthew Catlett is a blessed father, husband, writer, and web developer in southern California. You can learn more about him on his blog, Programming Life, which is focused on spirituality, self-improvement, and inspiration. You can also contact him for web development services through his consulting website, Peripheral Sight.

For more information, please visit programminglife.net

This Post Has 8 Comments

  1. Great insights Matt. I have struggled and continue to struggle with questions this but like you say the questions and choices are not really questions or choices at all. The choice is really whether we want to express ourselves with love and live a life we truly love or not. Thanks

    1. Thank you, dear heart, and you’re welcome. The falseness of so many of our struggles and the questions from which they arise becomes apparent in stillness and silence, meditation and mindfulness. Blessings.

  2. Wow!! you wrote this!!! Wow!! its true. the madness become apparent. . but the madness keeps me enslaved. i meditate. i have stillness/silence. still i don’t know who i am. the being beyond dualism remains hidden by layers of conditioning. my few ‘normal’ friends just want happiness. and when suffering comes they want to get rid of it. Again i say ‘wow.’ because just now ive had a sane conversation with you. thank you so much.

    1. I’m so glad you enjoyed it, Helen. <3 Let go of the need to know who you are – attempts at articulation warp and mutate your self-experiencing. Let go of the striving after happiness and identity, and they begin to unveil themselves – much of the veil is composed of the striving to pierce the veil. Many blessings.

  3. Just read it again Matthew. letting go has been forced onto to me. oooh, conditioning sticks like glue. thanks again. hope you and family are well.

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