Sinterklaas (part 5)
Tuesday, 4 December 2007
All that is said and written about awakening, self-realisation, rebirth or whatever-IT-is-called, means little to nothing until it is experienced. Some wise men advise that, considering this fact, it is better not to talk about it at all, because it will only lead to fantasies, that will form an extra obstacle for people who try to wake up. Maybe. I always felt very inspired by the few people who spoke openly about the phenomenon and the way it happened to them. But there were only a few who did. Most that is written and said about this phenomenon, is not about the phenomenon itself, but about the obscurations of the mind that underwent the miraculous experience.
The Sinterklaas myth is an helpful instrument in explaining how the mind works and what awaking in essence is. When I first realised this, I wrote this idea down in an article, that was refused by all magazines that I sent it to. That may mean that it is not such a helpful instrument at all, but I still think that it is. So, here is a short version.
The mind is basically a story that we learn and create about Life, with our self in the head role. (Nice wordplay!) This story is made up of information that is laid over experiences. The experiences are true, but the way we interpret and explain them is definitely not true. The whole story is therefore a lie. And the mind is an incredible artist, that can use every experience and every piece of information to support the story and to make it bigger.
The story that we have in our mind about Life and our self, is very much like the story that a little child creates about Sinterklaas. That story is based on experiences ( finding presents in its shoe, seeing the Sint & the Pieten on television, etcetera), but most of all on information that is given by the parents and other grownups. And on the information that the child fantasises itself. But when a child grows up and gets more experiences and more data, it becomes more and more difficult to incorporate all this in the story. In the end the story becomes so complex and absurd, that one day the child can no longer believe it. Or that the parents can no longer stand their own lies, and tell the child the truth: Sinterklaas doesn’t exist.
These four words are the necessary piece of information to make the whole story fall apart. Four almost six years it was the best story the child knew, and it was True beyond doubt. It is a miracle that children can handle this paradigm shift. It is very much like Neo in The Matrix! Most children “see” the new Truth instantly: they are able to re-organise their experiments and the new information into a new story without much mental damage.
The story that we all have in mind about how Life works and what we are, is exactly like the Sinterklaas story: it is all based on lies and misunderstandings. Unfortunately it seems extremely hard to wake up from this illusion. Or maybe there are not enough people telling the Truth: “All matter is mere energy, condensed to slow vibration. We are all One Conciousness, experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as “death”. Life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.” ( Bill Hicks .)
I have heard too much Sinterklaas songs recently, so I will not share one with you today. Here is a song that basically tells the same story as what I tried to tell here, but in different words. Many songs do. But you have to take them more literal than we are thought to do.