Sam: I wrote something about solving tasks more effectively:
The more you multitask, the more scattered your ideas will be. Let’s make it unitask! Whatever project you are most passionate about, spend a day on it. Spend days on it! Ask the most basic questions, the most stupid questions, all kinds of questions until you have one very meaningful question and then give it time. Get some rest, let it sit undisturbed – like baking a cake – it will rise when it’s time. It could be when you are in the shower, when you dream or you are on the pot without your phone. Just like that, you’ll wake up, you’ll have a groundbreaking solution. It will happen! Never underestimate the sheer will of a limitless mind. That’s how the law of attraction works – by unitasking!
iRealization: That is quite true. The only thing I will say is… there comes a point where the question of multitasking or unitasking has no relevance. The notion of a task is only with respect to its outcome, otherwise what is the task? You must have an expectation that something will happen, otherwise there is no task, right? Multitasking is when you have so many expectations that you want everything to happen. Then your mind is scattered. Unitasking is “Oh, I’m going to try to have only one thing!” and all that. But then again it’s another idea, whereas ideas, as you said, come and go on their own. So, to see who is the one who is doing the task, multi or uni, is important.
The question of cause and effect and free will are very closely intertwined. For there to be cause and effect, free will is a given, meaning there is something you did. Something somebody did, which is the cause and it presumes that there is an effect. That there is something that has occurred. Both of those are needed for you to talk about cause and effect. Right?
Sam: Correct.
iRealization: We talked about this before. Which comes first, the cause or the effect? Typically people say that cause creates the effect, right? But, is it really that?
Sia: I strongly feel that the present is what dictates the past.
iRealization: Only when you observe the effect, you search for a cause, right? The cause is never observed until you see the effect. That means the effect comes first.
Sia: Yes.
iRealization: And then you imagine a cause. If one does not observe the effect, then the question of cause doesn’t arise, right?
Sia: That’s fantastic. *laugh*
iRealization: It’s very simple, right? Cause and effect ends the minute you see which one comes first. So, what we are discussing is karma – the law of action and reaction – both are inevitable. When both of them are taken to be just a process, the actual happening has no relevance. It’s simply a process – this happened because of the previous thing, and the previous thing, and the previous thing… So the very question of free will does not arise.
Sawyer: Cause and effect is just an idea, it’s not a real thing in the big sense. What caused what?
iRealization: Yeah, I’m asking you now. Let’s say you’re walking on the street and your car is parked where you left it and suddenly you see this person driving in a crazy manner – talking on his phone while driving and completely side-swipes it. Now, what happened? What was the cause and effect?
Sawyer: Where do you want to start?
iRealization: Exactly! You can start anywhere you want and the reality of what you say that happened will be missing. You essentially make it up and have to come up with a story about how this and that happened.
Sawyer: At best you can only speak from your perspective, of where it started, it doesn’t matter.
iRealization: Right. And to continue on that logic, you’d have to have woken up at exactly 7:15am that morning, because you needed to go to the bathroom and then you figured you might as well go and get the groceries you needed and park your car there. So who’s to blame for your car to be parked there at the exact time he was going to side-swipe it?
What we are saying is that the observation of anything is the effect, is it not? One sees something as a happening. That determination that something has happened is based on what? When you walk through the market, lot’s of things are happening – conversations, people walking by and doing all kinds of things – you walk through the whole market and come out the other side and so many things have happened during that walk. But you did not know them, you didn’t pay attention. You have no opinion on those things.
Let’s say you see a guy punching another guy in the back of a farmer’s market stall. Immediately you have a reaction! “How dare you punch him!” But the truth is that the aggressor's sister was badly beaten up by this guy. I don’t want to go into a moral debate but essentially, he has forgiven him in one punch. So, your opinion has only to do with what you observe, and that is always limited. The effect is “Oh, you punched him, how dare you!” and the cause is what? That it’s this person’s nature to be an idiot? All opinions, no?
Sia: You’re essentially saying that no narration is required whatsoever. Narration being my own issue.
iRealization: That’s all! Effect is observation. First of all you observe something, and the cause of that observation is the fact that you can observe. Your observation is the cause, that’s all! If you couldn’t see it, it wouldn’t happen. That is the ultimate cause! If it could not be known, you wouldn’t know it and this question wouldn’t arise. Is it not?
Sia: Can you say that sentence one more time for me?
iRealization: People ask why such a thing happened: “Ok, I get all this. But why is it like this?” The answer to that is – why not?
Sia: Well, right. It’s simply because it had been seen.
iRealization: Because it can be, it’s possible, right? There’s nothing that’s not possible, you see? So the question of surprise, or reaction, or narration comes only when you think something is not normal, so to speak, or not natural. Nothing to think about when it has to do with an ongoing natural process. We don’t discuss our breathing. So there’s nothing to react to in a natural thing, it’s only when it's unnatural that you react, right? So slowly you realize… is there anything that is not natural? What about the pandemic, is it not natural? You did not expect it based on our wishes, of course. Haven’t we built California on top of a limestone oven? Where every year the thing gets so hot that we get massive fires? I mean, that’s a natural process, right? So there’s nothing to react to, really. Is there?
*silence*
You can react now, though.
*laughs*
Sia: My response is “Ok, cool!” I feel relaxed. *laugh*
iRealization: That’s what it is! It is the ultimate relaxation. When one talks about having a still mind and all these things, what is required is a clear mind because the clarity is lost when the mind is moving. If the mind is always moving you will be seeing it through the lens of that movement.
Two people walk out of the ice cream shop, one is Sawyer, who has his car parked right there, and at this moment his new beautiful car is wrecked by another car. They both see the same thing but reactions are different. Which one is the correct reaction? Sawyer is really sad to see his new car destroyed, and the other guy is even excited witnessing that: “Oh man! Have you seen that?! Crazy stuff!”
Sia: Thank you. Like you said, it’s very relaxing. What you are saying releases a lot of mind pressure.
iRealization: So, over time you’ll find that in that relaxed state, because everything is happening, you know? But it is being distorted by what is in the mind, which is the accumulation of knowledge and ideas. When I say accumulation it is because we all want to know, we all want to be knowledgeable. The “I want to know that” is the problem. Iit is a limited perspective, a limited knowing. You cannot know the reality actually, you can only know your interpretation of it. Now when you see that all interpretation is false, what is the use of limiting yourself?
Sawyer: I feel like this is tapping into the whole concept that we live in an universe of relationship, where everything is relating to everything.
iRealization: For there to be a relationship there has to be multiple entities, where a relationship can be had between each other. And such a relationship is based on expectation, otherwise you wouldn’t call it being in a relationship with that person. Only if your expectations are being met will you limit the whole thing into a “nice relationship”, when really there is nobody there to have a relationship with. If you see clearly that there are no multiple people then what is the question of relationship, right? This clarity of seeing results in something called action, which is already complete based on the fullness of reality. Not based on the unreality of all the different people and all things being connected to each other. Those are all ideas, you know? The reason I say they are ideas is because there are not multiple things connected. In order to have multiple things being connected, it is required to have the experience of separation so that you are able to connect things back. This is not a word game, it’s about actual experience. There is no separation in the first place, there is no two things. Unless this becomes very, very clear, the question of relationship, and me, and the other, will not go away. But if you realize this, the so-called relationships will automatically transform. I cannot say it’s for the better or worse but it will transform because the truth cannot be suppressed, so to speak. So it expresses itself the way it should, rather than you holding it and keeping it in any way, which is an unnatural process and is only causing you suffering and everybody else’s suffering. Not sure if that made sense.
Sawyer: Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Expectations…
iRealization: Yes, the word relationships is that, expectations. See, people ask about love, they talk about love, compassion and all these things. The universe is a compassionate universe now. It’s already compassionate. Everybody who is on the planet right now is eating, even though they don’t all get to eat sushi or ice cream. Some people are more hungry than others but the food is there, all the animals are eating. Birds wake up and find their food, they don’t plan anything, they don’t have to accumulate. Whatever is required appears.
How did you meet someone in your life? How did you meet your significant other for example? People think that the most important thing is where you go to school, who you meet, who you end up with and all the big things that should be pursued in life. None of it is determined by you! It just so happened to be that way, if you look back and realize the truth of it. And that is the case with everything.
Jacob: I’m having a hard time understanding cause and effect you were describing.
iRealization: See, you are the person observing and you want to understand things.
Jacob: Yes.
iRealization: Therefore you say “in order to understand things I need to know what causes what,” right? That’s how I understand how things happen, how it works, how life is. For that you have to have cause and effect. Any understanding requires cause and effect in the highest order, which maintains that cause and effect. For example, understanding the theory of gravity won’t be useful if it won’t repeat itself. It always has to be the same, right? Gravity means 9.8 meters per second-square. Everytime it is the same. If I leave the milk out at a certain temperature, it doesn’t turn to ice cream, it always turns into yogurt. So this repetitive pattern drives us to think about cause and effect. For there to be understanding there has to be something to understand and then understand its cause. That is what is meant by understanding. So to understand something is to understand the cause and effect that underlies it.
Jacob: I don’t see why that requires you to know something.
iRealization: Everything has a cause, so for you to know what the cause is, the fact that you can know something, isn’t it required?
Jacob: From my limited interpretation of things, I understand that science is basically trying to find the root causes of things.
iRealization: Yes, and I’m saying that to try to find the root cause of anything is the accumulation of knowledge of how something works. So, you observe the effect and now you are defining the cause. Apple fell down from the tree, that’s the effect. Why did it happen? That is the theory of gravitation.
Jacob: Makes sense. If I didn’t see the apple falling I wouldn’t be looking for why the apple fell, correct?
iRealization: Also, if I don’t know things, if I don’t have any way to get knowledge, I cannot answer these questions. So, first we have to see what is knowledge. Instead of wanting to know how the apple fell, why don’t we question first the whole world where this is happening? Just now I was asleep, I woke up and this whole world came into being. How come we don’t ask that question? In order to see this apple falling, I have to wake up, the apple tree has to be there, the Earth has to be there, everything else has to be there exactly as it is now. Right? So the cause of this apple falling is absolutely everything. Where is the cause? What is the cause? Is it the theory of relativity or gravitation? That is just a small part of the answer.
Jacob: It is indeed, correct.
iRealization: Right. Therefore the actual answer is absolutely everything. So, what is the reason to look for a specific answer? Isn’t it limited only? On the other hand you don’t need to know the theory of gravity to live your life. You can live your life perfectly fine without knowing anything about the theory of gravity. so this knowledge is not necessary. Is it not?
Jacob: Yes. And if we trace it back to Galileo, he wanted to know…
iRealization: And why did he want to know? He happened to be there for no specific reason. If it was not Galileo, it could have been somebody else. There is nothing special about anything going on. It’s not Galileo who did it. It just happened to be there. If he wasn’t born to his exact parents, who gave him his exact experiences, then that situation would never have arisen. It was meant to be. Once this is understood the question of free will disappears, and that is followed by the disappearance of action and reaction. If the question of action and reaction disappears then what remains?
Jacob: Hum…
iRealization: See, action and reaction, or karma, is a logical loop. That’s how people live their lives: “If I do this, this will happen”, “That happened because this happened.” Purely conceptual, is it not? Why did the pandemic happen? You can give countless reasons. Will any of them be true? The reality is not knowable and there is no need to know it. That is where the relaxation appears
Photography - Courtesy of Andrey Andreyev
