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Jan Kasparec's Art Studio 109, 1000 Parker Street, Vancouver

We are just raindrops

20.8.2012

I decided to publish this blog with the question and comments of my friend who helped me with corrections and composition. I think that my answers to her comments might clarify similar questions of readers and at the same time show more of my intention.

Here we are, Falling down from the sky in this brief journey we call life, a million different reflections of our universal core.

As we rush towards our envisioned destinations, we feel so solid and so separate from everything and everybody else. After all, we are individuals with our own dreams and goals to pursue in this race. The breeze on our cheeks seems so real; it`s blowing just for us!

Others are crossing our path constantly. They look so similar to us, yet so different. Do I not come from a better looking and better smelling cloud? But of course, since I come from a distinct family with stronger consistent values. So we tune up our little raindrops according to our beliefs and worshiped backgrounds. I mean according to beliefs we accepted as ours. Except that they are not ours, we got them from whoever we chose to be our ?parents?, from whichever school our folks decided to put us into, from whatever friends we surrounded ourselves with and careers we ?elected? to follow. Most importantly, from whichever country we decided to appear at. This determines not only the oh-so-very ?important? choice of culture and religion, but also, somewhat ridiculously, the given class of paper, a fancy name for it is Passport, which arbitrates our starting position and degree of freedom in this virtual race.

And here we are, tracing the trajectories of our downfall, feeling like gods, feeling miserable and unworthy and different from everybody else.

My friend`s questions and comments: I`m not sure if careers really dictate our beliefs and backgrounds, more like groups of people contributing to the conditioning of an individual from infancy is what I`m sensing you`re trying to say, so I would just exclude that last bit there. Are you deliberately being sarcastic about "choices"? Even with the use of raindrops as a metaphor, being pure in its beginning state like a baby, we had no choice in parents, and why the additional quotation marks around the word? The reason I question the choice here is that the rest is consistent with our own decision making. We can choose the people we surround ourselves with and the careers that we elect to follow, if you decide to keep that in there. Why feeling like Gods among the rest of the misery in that list? Normally feeling like a God means feeling invincible. Is being different so bad?

Author`s answer: Your view on choices "in life" (meaning incarnated life) might be that of many, especially the materialistic crowd (or "partially materialistic"), but not mine. I believe that life is endless, death being just a switch to another level. This universe is made of energy and energy cannot cease, it just changes. After studying the subject and long periods of self-reflection I came to agree with teachings which indicate that our free choices begin much earlier than our birth. Actually they never start or end. They exist on every level of existence, even before or after what we call life, "before" and "after" both being inadequate expressions too, because time is just an attribute of three dimensional space, not that of Universe which is much more complex and where past and future can exist at the same everlasting moment. Hard to explain and hard to understand, when our brains are conditioned to understand "only" 3 dimensions, nevertheless I do believe that there is no past of future from where we come from.

Back to choices: I believe we DO choose our families and backgrounds to which we`ll incarnate, using the same principle of free choice as later on Earth, but this time from a perspective of a soul, which is clean of ego and connected to universal wisdom. In this state, our choice is not based on anything egoistic, but purely on experimental desire and wisdom of our soul. We come here to experiment and feel on physical level what we already know on universal level, but haven`t "lived". Otherwise my vision of Universe would have to be that of some God who gives you brief moment of real freedom in your physical incarnation, but as soon as you go back to your soul`s home, you are under "his" reign and he chooses where you`ll go next and under which circumstances based on your past choices. From this point of view the common view of "free choice" becomes somewhat limited, more like"give a rabbit some taste of meadow before throwing him back to his cage". This is old concept of "punishing God" or Karma. I don`t believe in either of them. No, there are no cages in Universe. Yes, we ARE part of bigger thing, moving along with it, but we HAVE absolute free choice in every aspect of our existence, and within that existence our incarnated "period" is but one bus stop on an endless ride.

As for choice of careers. Yes, I am being deliberately sarcastic. Nevertheless, I mentioned the choices in chronologic order and I do think that career totally belongs there, as one of the last shaping stones of our "selves" (artificial ones, the made up ones, becuase in reality 99.99% of people don`t know who they TRULY are and how HUGE they are). Our career shapes many people as significantly as their parents. To give you an example, look at most of lawyers or police men. Horribly deformed by their career beliefs they accepted as perception of "themselves".

Why feeling like Gods? Just using opposite examples or wide spectrum of how people feel as per their "free choices" (still the same sarcastic free choice made for them by others) to demonstrate how ironic it is to feel so. Some feel miserable, some feel like Gods, but none of it is real. A person who conquered himself/herself, who truly experienced who he/she IS, feels EQUANIMOUS, regardless the situation.

Shortly after we materialize from vastness, our vision is being actively shortened and blinded by everybody, most ferociously by those who claim that they love us the most (or their own vision of us?). After all they got some BIG plans for us! Initial connection with our endless origin and peaceful memories of our indestructible essence quickly subdue to occasional glimpses and then ceases altogether as everybody`s efforts seem to gravitate towards separateness, our ?individuality?, our narrow-mindedness, our class distinctions, our goals, which, again, are not our own, but those imposed on us by others. If they were truly ours, they`d come from inside, from our transparent shiny centers, from the light which contains all the colors, not from outside. No dream of any soul involves any solid thing, because we are not solid. We are made of planets revolving in vastness just as the rest of the Universe. True dreams, our dreams, are nothing but dreams of feelings.

Here we are, tiny speckles of raindrops, who forgot their limitless source, speeding down through endless space, feeling so special, so lonely.

My friend`s questions and comments: I feel that this paragraph should precede the one before it. What do you mean about dreams being nothing but feelings? What do you mean we are raindrops made of planets revolving in vastness?

Author`s answer: What our soul dreams of is just a feeling, not a thing. Soul, you and me, US, we come from universal wisdom, we are ?made? of it, but we can only experiece it here. Gateway to experiece is FEELING, never a thing. It`s our reaction to things or situations in form of feelings which determines our bipolar perception of it. It`s hard to explain yet it`s very simple. If you wish to have more money, what you truly desire is the feeling that will be provided by having more money. Money itself, as an object, is not the actual desire, much less that of our soul. If you were inflicted by some weird disease which would make you totally immune to feelings, you would not give a damn about money or any other object. You would not feel any difference between being poor or rich. We crave feelings, not objevte- these are just the keys to the desired feeling on this level of existence, and on level of existence where we spring from (non-materialistic and eternal), how could you possibly dream about a materialistic thing, when you understand the impermanency of it? No soul (meaning NOBODY if you want to speak in materialistic terms) has a vision, a dream, of "possessing" a thing or "achiving" certain career level before incarnating on Earth. The dreams of souls are the dreams of feelings, million different forms of feelings which can be experienced on this planet. But never a thing.

We are raindrops made of planets revolving in vastness. This is pure physics. 99.9% of our bodies is space. Distances between particles we now think are the smallest ones (neutrons, protons and electrons) and the distances between atoms themselves, is so IMMENSE, that it is very much comparable to distances between planets in universe. Also, these particles ARE revolving, very much like other objects in space. "Space" between solid things takes MAJORITY of SPACE. From this perspective, we are much less solid than what we seem to be and we are definitely revolving, and in vastness too.

People don`t realize how revolutionary and deep Einstein`s Theory of relativity is. We compare everything to specle of dust of our planet we grew up on. But by lighting a match, you might have initiated the Big bang and end subsequent of a Universe which lasted a second in our time and billion of years in some "other planet`s" time. The whole history of our planet is without exagerration a morning yawn on universal scale.

The more we believe in our dissimilarity, the more solid the shields of our raindrops become. This turns out to be really handy for pinning up more ?stuff? on the walls. Stuff which can be bought with money is most common ? one can buy almost anything these days- but solidified sorrow is another option. Misery, guilt and blame can be so real that we wear it in very much the same manner as we wear our Ferraris and trendy clothes. There are billion more shadows of our definition of ?truth? of course. Ego is damn smart, after all it comes from the same smart-ass source. You gotta love it! Nothing but labels that we pin against the walls of our raindrops. Eventually our shiny spacious homes pile up with so much heavy redundant stuff, that in order to interact and feel adequate with other raindrops, they need to carry as much shit as us. Don`t have a Porsche? Better pile up some more material goods before you dare to approach my private super-raindrop space! You can`t understand me, how could you anyway, when I carry so much pain! And here we are a lost flock of raindrops, heading right back to source, confusing gravity with private airlines.

My friend`s questions and comments: I`m not sure what you mean by "You can`t understand me, how could you anyways, when I carry so much pain!" How does that fit into the material possessions subject of this paragraph?

Author`s answer: That is just an example from the opposite scale of beliefs we inflict upon ourselves, same as before with "feeling miserable, feeling like Gods". One feels so high because he has a Porsche, other feels so low because he carries so much pain. And each one of them feels separate and impossible to be understood by anybody else who does not "carry" the same.

The DAY eventually comes. It always does, regardless how much strain and stardust we put between the cloud and ocean doesn`t it? What we called goals and ambitions weren`t quite the actual desired destination, just a minor golden haze we sped through and felt brief satisfaction, and subsequent incompleteness as soon as we left it. Time to set up a new goal and put up couple more stickers on the walls! But what was just a vague notion of menacing ocean with raging waves can be seen now. Not enough time left to hoard more stuff, blast it! It`s approaching so fast now, that we either desperately hold onto whatever we accumulated in blind faith that it`ll save us (or make us look more dignified in our final crash?) or we finally let go. Difference is the first real difference in all the differences we invented along our journey. Difference in letting go and holding onto is that of a light transparent raindrop kissing the surface of ocean, sighing with pleasure as it realizes it came back home and remembered its perfection in the very instant of the loving contact and that of a murky raindrop loaded with pieces of soil it clutches to desperately, when it smashes into the unforgiving forgiveness of ocean with a loud and not exactly artistically well performed splash, leaving all the crap on the surface for the waves to play with, instantly loosing all the made-up separations and borders, crying out loud - Ooooooh my, is that it for real? Game over! J

My friend`s questions and comments: Run on sentence: " Difference in letting go and holding onto is that of a light transparent raindrop kissing the surface of ocean, sighing with pleasure as it realizes it came back home and remembered its perfection in the very instant of the loving contact and that of a murky raindrop loaded with pieces of soil it clutches to desperately, when it smashes into the unforgiving forgiveness of ocean with a loud and not exactly artistically well performed splash, leaving all the crap on the surface for the waves to play with, instantly loosing all the made-up separations and borders, crying out loud - ooooooh my, is that it for real? Game over!" I`m not sure what you are trying to say here. I know it`s an example of the previous sentence, but it`s a disjointed thought with too much symbolism and may be difficult for the reader to see through all of that. Sometimes simplicity in words will carry out a stronger meaning than using too much purple prose. Hopefully, the trim I made to it still stays faithful to your original idea. :)

My friend`s trimmed version:

The day eventually comes. It always does, regardless of how much strain and stardust we put between the clouds and the ocean doesn`t it? What we called goals and ambitions weren`t quite the actual desired destinations, just a minor golden haze we sped through and felt a brief satisfaction, and then the subsequent incompleteness as soon as we left it. Time to set up a new goal and put up a couple more stickers on the walls! But what was just a vague notion of a menacing ocean with raging waves can be seen now. Not enough time left to hoard more stuff, blast it! It`s approaching so fast now, that we either desperately hold onto whatever we accumulated in blind faith that it`ll save us or we finally let go. Will we look more dignified in our final crash? Or will we allow the light in our raindrops kiss the surface of the ocean once more; sigh with pleasure as we realize where home was all along?

Author`s answer: Yes, this sentence is very long and badly formulated, nevertheless by eliminating it the way you did, you eliminated the meaning and purpose of this paragraph. What I am trying to say is:

There is just one difference in life, which really matters. And it is that of either sticking to your rigid beliefs or opening up to wisdom of universe with acceptance. We can hord one million precious things in our lives and make it to the posts of presidents, but it`ll all go in the moment when we merge with our source (hitting the surface of ocean). It is not bad to accumulate or achieve high posts (even though bit stupid and predominantly egoistic) but clutching, identifying yourself with it, is. Difference achieved by letting go of this artificial belief is that of a piece of shit hitting the surface really hard (because you realize the truth you tried to deny your whole life in fraction of second) next to a lovely transparent light raindrop kissing the ocean (because you knew all the way along that your fall is just a ride and hitting the ocean is not death but coming home). When you LET GO, you CREATE SPACE for universal wisdom and peace to fill you- you are not scared of anything because you ACCEPT and TRUST beforehand. When you HOLD ONTO (whatever thing or belief), you are just scared of emptiness within you, because you did not understand the divine essence of it. This is one difference which can actually make a difference in your life;)

I deliberaty used expressions such as "menacing, smashing, crap, waves to play with etc" when speaking about the people who hold onto and "kissing, sighing with pleasure etc." for people who let go to metaphorically demonstrate the difference.

The ever changing face of the ocean hides unsuspected calm depths within, much like the pure white tops of the summer clouds blooming from the dark heavy mass beneath. It`s just okey to take a short drive in Ferrari or sail a while under the black sheets of Misery on our discovery trip across the sky, but instead of pinning them as permanent fixtures to our walls, put them to your picture album, have a smiley look on those pictures whenever you choose to open the album and before you come back to our cozy eternal home, mail it to unknown receiver with a brief note: It was fun, I felt so much, Thank you!

My friend`s trimmed version:

The ever changing face of the ocean hides unsuspected depths within, much like the pure white tops of summer clouds blooming from the dark heavy mass beneath. It`s okay to take a short ride in a Ferrari or sail a while under the black sheets of misery on our journey across the sky. Instead of pinning them as permanent fixtures to our walls, we should place them aside, in picture albums to look back on fondly as moments in time.

Author`s comments: Here again, I feel like you let out the essential part and transformed in into somewhat "materialistic" version. As I see the things, we should not place anything aside and keep it and come back to it, that is just another form of "holding onto" (people living in past are very good example of that), we should LET GO. That is why I mention the mailing of the album to receiver unknown: metaphor for act of letting go and acceptance, trust in universe, when you don`t know where you are going, yet you still have the gratitude and faith in whatever comes (or goes to, in case of my album).

If you want something new and beautiful to enter your life, you have to open your hand and let the old experience float away, because there is nothing new coming in a clenched fist. You have to open the palm of your hand- the most basic gesture of letting go and readiness to receive.

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