Zen and the Cube - Sunday Funday with a Dash of Philosophy

in #comedy7 years ago

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It must be admitted...there's a LOT going on in this cartoon!

Yeah I know it looks pretty simple on the surface, and when I first saw it...well, it made me laugh, and I hope it elicits the same response from you, dear steemies.

But, and you just knew a 'but' was coming didn't you, it has so much more to say. So shall we dive a little deeper? Oh come on, you know you wanna!

So it seems that our world is designed to keep us scrambled, disjointed, restricted. Quite probably, deliberately designed this way.

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We live in our neat little houses square shaped boxes, contained within fences to keep us IN and others OUT!

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Our desks at work are cubicles, our computers ringfenced, we drive around in boxes on wheels, like sardines we pack ourselves into tubes, trains, planes and buses and restrict our physical selves within the 4 sided walls of every building we encounter. As this 4 minute short film by Steve Cutts so graphically illustrates..

And we think, we imagine, we beLIEve we are free!! Oh the irony.

And if the external manifestations of our constricted lifestyles are not restrictive enough, inside our own heads, skulls and minds we are guilty of compartmentalising ourselves, our own consciousness!

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Heck we even categorise our minds into subsections, ego v higher self, subconscious v conscious, right v left brain functions, neutral witness v interpretive self, inner Mum and Dad (yes, those voices of your parental programming when you were but a sponge soaking up everything that was spoon fed to you) memory cells, inner male v inner female, and we even have shrinks to pick apart the filing systems! No wonder our minds scramble, scatter and succumb so easily to dis-orders!

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But there is a way out of the rat trap, free from this neurological maze. All spiritual practices to one extent or other, advocate mind mastery, and many provide active protocols that teach us how to calm the mental processes, how to detach from them, to be still in the storms and ride the tiger of ones inner thought tides!

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So can we can become smooth and Zen like amid the hurricanes of whirling mental processing? Just pick a meditation method you like or resonate with, and with persistence and practice we too, can crack the Rubric, colour ourselves harmonious and ordered, and step free from the box, into the boundlessness of pure consciousness.

There is even a calculation for that!

cT+O(l)T+dCK=G^C

And for all the non mathematicians...that includes me by the way...allow me to translate that;

Critical Thinking plus Original lateral Thinking plus direct Cognitive Knowing equals Genius to the power of Consciousness. Yes, I made that up, and if you have any questions...see me after this post! 😊

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I loved that photo, what a simple way to explain such a complicated issue. And you have certainly made a very good attempt to explain this wordless knowledge.

I wonder if you have read Eckhart Tolle's books? I happened to read his book way back in 2008 for the first time and i did understand a lot of things on an intellectual level. But it was only recently, in the past 2-3 years that I've cone know the truth that he was trying to share in it. I had to go through hell before i could know the truth of these things but well, as Rumi wrote, you have to die before you die to really get to know it.

Oh thats a very kind comment @sanaaz thank you for acknowledging that! I do attempt to keep things as simple as possible. Not because the steemit community isn't intelligent....far far from it. But because it takes few words to express simple truth.

Yes, I have read a few Tolle books, amongst many other great teachers of wisdom and deep understanding, and enjoyed them. Glad you found benefit within their pages too. It's a funny thing how it takes time for words of wisdom to percolate through our many layers, how we can grasp the meaning intellectually but the truth of the words takes longer to penetrate deeply and resonate at a different level. For me this is the difference between a mental understanding and an integrated innerstanding.

I am sorry to hear of your suffering but I do know that we die to be reborn and as Rumi noted, the cracks in the heart are where the light can enter in. You are brave to honour yourself first and foremost by not giving up and having the courage to face YOURSELF.

Very grateful to have you share your thoughts here and I will welcome the next time our steemit paths cross again...in the meantime I hope this image will inspire you and bring joy ❤️

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I agree with everything you've written and thank you for your kind response. It truly is a pleasure to come across a fellow traveller on this path.

When kindred souls meet...they KNOW each other. Glad to know you @sanaaz and wishing you fruitful and awakened full steem ahead😇❤️⭐️

Absolutely well explained, these pictures perfectly depict the rigidity of society. Resteemed, upvoted :)

Thank you @tonysayers33 your comments, support and resteem is much appreciated! It's high time we all stopped being so darned SQUARE isn't it????!!!

Hey @lilygolightly, nice light look at the current condition of much of humanity. I really like the images you selected, and the video illustrates the point extremely well. Ummm, just a word of advice though - I'm pretty certain this will come up at some stage, so I'm bringing it up now. It's to do with attributing source references to external supporting materials, and it is one of the points crucial for a post to be considered "quality" on Steemit. Non-referencing is frowned upon by the etiquette police! ..check out this guide (half-way down, section 'credit') by @joecxt. I have thought about whether I ought to point this out to you or not, and I am doing so because I noticed it, and to ignore mentioning it to you would do all of us (you, me, steemit) a disservice IMHO. Thanks for listening lily :)

Hello there my Scottish friend! Nice to see you and I really appreciate your constructive positive comments!

As you know I usually do cite my sources but today I was pushed for time and wanted to get the post "out there" and totally forgot to give the credits. I will edit it later when I am not rushing around like a crazy woman!! Hope all good in bargeland and thanks again for the reminder⭐️

G'day @lilygolightly I liked the cartoon and thought it a good picture of most of the world. Myself, I have known solitary, I've been cut off from civilisation by floods and by deserts, and have virtually lived for a time on an island (not deserted, I was there). The restrictions we place about ourselves, are our means of being free. To be free in the middle of a desert with no food or water or transport except how far one can walk without falling, is not a great freedom. The training we accept for our minds is the ability to be able to limit the incursion of too much freedom. So, in fact we build our fences to feel control over our space so that we can be free within our accepted limits. The body we free with athletic fitness and our ability to stand alone in the desert (or mountaintop, or at sea) and stay or go according to our limit of food and water. The emotions we choose to indulge or release allow us the ability to be free to leave or stay in company. The trained mind gives us the ability to be free of exterior authority within our own thoughts. So our view of freedom, comes to our relationship with spirit, ours and all other. In the spiritual side I find myself in total agreement with Sri Harold Kemp, who said once in my hearing at Le Havre, ''The ability to be free, is the ability to grant others the ability to be free.''

Beautifully expressed, @simon62 and thank you for adding such deep thoughts to this post!

I love the Sri Harold Kemp quote particularly and wonder how many of us actually manage to achieve this, WITHOUT overlaying our own desires, want and needs onto others?

Yes, I do agree that we have the illusion of control in our worlds, but it seems we exercise this control only when we box our lives in, and contain them. And having done so we have lost the ability to extend ourselves, our range, our inner and outer territories, forgetting the boundlessness that is our birthright. I think many are beginning to wake up to the self without borders, to 'innerstanding' themselves and the limits we put on ourselves every single time we think, do or even be! Of course, a LOT of that has been manufactured and designed that way, so we remain ensnared within the Matrix, so to speak, but as the illusions fall away more are beginning to seek deeper answers WITHIN themselves...hence my joy at finding an image, the cartoon, which graphically illustrates this!

GLad you stopped by and thanks again for such a meaningful and honest comment❤️

You are most welcome. I am always glad to read your posts, they take me places I don't usually venture often. 😇

Ooh what a lovely compliment, @simon62 thank you! Its great to have fellow travellers along the road less taken...especially when you can take flight and soar overhead on the magical mystery carpet ride instead 😊😊😊

I am a Child of the Dragon on this twenty-second day of our Moon. 😇

Well one things for sure....as a dragon you will have no need of a flying carpet then!!! 😊😇😎

😂 😂
Handy though, for ease of descent from my ivory towers. The Child of the Dragon will find each Day of the Moon , to his benefit or his caution, depending on his native view. 😉

Two sides to every tale (tail) especially if one has a dragon's scale!!

Bet the treasure trove of gold comes in mighty handy too!

I refer, of course, to the INNER treasure, not the silly metal stuff 🏵👑🌟