PART 4, TAKING IT TO ANOTHER LEVEL
April 8, 2011. I call them the SOB People. In this case, SOB stands for State of Being. You may recall that the verb “to be” and all its forms is labeled “the state of being” verb. It expresses no action.
It’s about Is. It’s about What Exists.
The SOB People love What Exists. They pray at that altar every day.
The SOB People look at imagination as an activity like the re-arranging of deck chairs. For them, nothing new ever occurs. Invention merely puts together what is already known. It takes ideas and images and fits them together in different ways. The present is only a redistribution of the past.
They are married forever to What Exists. They stake out their territory there. “Nothing new under the sun.” They take pride in this view. They think it makes them very wise.
Actually it deteriorates their lives and energy one drop at a time.
In their graves and beyond, they keep mouthing, “What Already Exists, What Already Exists, What Already Exists.”
A conversation with an SOB Person can be like talking to a meat grinder. When you emerge at the other end, you want to jump into a pool and drown.
Teachers in writing classes and seminars often tell their students, “Write about what you know.” This pearl has stalled large numbers of aspiring authors. I would tell them, “Write about anything you want to—especially what you don’t know.”
From the perspective of ordinary reality, imagination is all about what is impossible. If that sounds like a koan, chew on it for a while.
Imagination is that faculty that can raise the dead.
Imagination can give rise to the spontaneous creation of what has never been before.
Imagination shifts the whole emphasis of living from the discovery of What Exists to the creation of something new, a new reality(ies).
Imagination decimates the entire library of human programming.
With imagination, you aren’t buying a story; you’re inventing countless numbers of stories.
But this invention isn’t just aimless ruminating—you create something new, you express something new, and you propel it into the world.
Without that, you float in a sea of gauze.
Of course, there is fear of the New.
People think something terrible might happen if they invent something new. Their friends might ridicule them. The whole universe might suddenly collapse. Their minds might shred.
Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that there are 3,456,876,217 levels of reality, including realms so nuanced and subtle in their energies that they are virtually invisible. Okay?
Now let’s suppose that an individual can invent, INVENT, one more level that was never there before.
In fact, let’s suppose he can invent 50 trillion new levels.
This is my point. No matter how you define or describe WHAT EXISTS, no matter how wide a net you cast, no matter what qualities or powers you ascribe to those levels that ALREADY EXIST, someone can come along and create levels that are entirely new, and THESE levels aren’t in the net, they aren’t in any net, they are beyond what has been established in the past.
Given this fact, are you ready to say that the search for illumination ends with what has already been established? Are you ready to say that REALIZATION OF SELF ends with discovering some level of reality that has already been put there?
This is where human programming really bites hard. This programming assumes and asserts that, with enough voyaging, with enough discovery, one can find the Ultimate, one can find “everything that needs to be found.”
Whereas the truth is you can create infinitely.
AND WHAT YOU CREATE IS NEW.
JON RAPPOPORT
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