Beyond a a Rubik's Cube

Do you know that there are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 (43 quintillion) possible permutations of the Rubik's Cube?  And if you were to turn it once every second, it would take you 1.4 trillion years to go through all the permutations.  But after all, this is a human creation, and thus by deduction our own potential could only be far greater and more complex.  In fact, it is infinite.  Then what is blocking us from making the most of what we can offer to ourselves and others?  Fear.

If one is to narrow down all feelings to only two, it would all belong to to either love and fear; which are indeed opposing.  Simply put, what is not love is fear.  And what is subliminal is also the most powerful.  Do you know how often we are feeding ourselves unconscious fearful thoughts, most of which we are totally oblivious to?  So start by bringing your awareness to your thought patterns and see how they have shaped your external world.  And by playing the role of an observer, watch the undercurrent candidly and see if you can transform the calamity to calmness - that is, by replacing a fearful thought with a loving one.  Even by changing just one thought a day, it will slowly reverse the process and bring you fruitful results given time.  Bear witness to that.

The Mind is Just One of the Senses

Buddhism has a very profound explanation on the human mind, one that takes us above and beyond traditional psychology.  There is nothing in the realm of human experience that is not dependent on and subject to the interpretation of the mind.  In Buddhism, there are the six senses or modes of perception: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and lastly, the mind.  Most of us are familiar with the first five senses, but the way the mind is being classified as a sense is definitely enlightening.  The mind is from which our perception is derived through the faculties of the first five senses.

Senses are no more than systems of cells in the brain which respond to stimuli which we then become conscious and aware of.  For the eye, light is the stimuli hitting the receptor cells.  Likewise the ear also has its receptors sensitive to particular kinds of stimuli that send nerve impulses along sensory neurons.  In the case of the mind, the stimuli is brain cell activity caused by thoughts.  So in other words, thoughts originate from within the mind, with or without external stimuli and give rise to sensory inputs.  In connection with the external world and the direct sensory experiences of light, taste, touch, the mind sense allows us to expand on them through our interpretation coming from our thoughts.  But where do these interpretations come from?  And more importantly, what are the causes of our countless judgement?  By default, they are retrieved from our "databank" or "software" which contains all our memories, beliefs and values that we so tightly hold onto and identify as part of us.

So would you want to the master or the slave of your own mind?

Reality and Dream

I believe my dream in my dream
Upon waking up, I have released my shackles
Relieved, Liberated, Exhausted

I believe my reality in my own reality
Upon waking up, I have shed my skin
Joyful, Excited, Anticipatory

Is the "how-to-wake-up" the be all and end all?
How about the gains and losses in my dream?
Or is it those gains and losses that make it real?
Or is it my feelings of such gains and losses?
Or is it my feelings of the loss of the Self?