2024-06-02 Controlling a small world

In order to control a small world, it is important to keep things simple and be aware of what is happening. Many people want to acquire more to expand their world, but it is possible to control your own world without becoming obsessive. It is important to let go of complexity and focus on what can be controlled. Simplifying life allows for efficiency and harmony. Knowing oneself is a journey and it is easier to discover what we are not rather than trying to find out who we are. By simplifying and maintaining a small space, it is possible to find stillness. It is not necessary to change others or make them understand. Genuine questions provide an opportunity to crystallize one's own beliefs. It is important to be conscious and make choices that work best for oneself while having a small impact on others. In order to control a small world, you have to keep things simple, you have to be able to be aware of that world, so you have to have few things, you have to be aware of where those things are, you have to be aware of what you could or could use in any given moment, you have to be constantly aware of what's taking place and what needs to take place. In order to maintain a level of control that allows a small world to function, to be a world that can be lived in, not just to survive, but to thrive, not to expand, not to need to grow and get bigger, which for many people is the definition of the world they live in, they want more, they want what they haven't had, they want what they haven't done or experienced, they acquire, this is my favourite candle, this is my favourite shirt, these are my favourite shoes, they want more and it's okay for them to have more because they don't understand that they can control their own world without having to be obsessive about it, without having to fight, without having to struggle, they think they are all living in the same world, they don't realise that they're only living in their own world and that the others that are in their world are versions of those that they think they are. While I don't live entirely alone in the sense that I do engage and interact with others, I see that they are versions of themselves and for the most part limit the interactions I have with those I am comfortable to be around. It's all part of keeping things simple. I don't have complete control of my world because I don't think anyone ever can. There are aspects, elements that have an appearance of randomness, unexpected things can occur and if I have to control everything then it would create a level of obsession that wouldn't allow for a state of peace to exist. For me to be content I have to accept what I can control and accept what I can't and allow things to take place that I couldn't have imagined or predicted, let's say, perhaps I could have imagined, but I couldn't have predicted and then I just simply do my best to work with it, to deal with it, to incorporate it into the small world I live in. I've learned to have things that are multifunctional. I decided to eliminate a great deal of things, physical things, because I live in a way that prohibits the acquisition of stuff just because it seems like a good idea at the time. If one lives in a house with lots of space and lots of cupboards and drawers you can always put something else in it. You're not having to deny yourself the fulfillment of a desire to acquire. You might have several of a thing that already does a particular job, has a particular function, but that might not stop you from acquiring more of them just because. I don't want to focus on comparison, me and them. I understand people do things differently, live differently, and throughout my life I have also lived differently. On some level I've always understood the need to let go of that which creates complexity, but it's taken me quite a long time to understand what that actually means, how to actually do it, how to feel content, not to feel like something's missing, to always be in a state of lack, wanting. It's a process. It's a journey. It's not perfect. For me, it is easier. I know I'm capable of many things. I have many skills, some of which are never really called upon. If one has a lot of tools in the box but doesn't actually need to take those tools out, it can be as if those tools don't exist. If they're never needed, it's as if there's no difference in having them or not having them. It isn't necessary for me to find a reason to use a tool just because I haven't used it for a while. I know how to use it. It comes out if it's needed. I can forget that I have it and just trust it will be there if it's needed. That makes sense. When I used to talk about how I saw the world, my perspective, maybe eight, ten years ago and before, I would find myself preaching often as if I had found something that others needed to understand and to put into practice too. But I couldn't express it any other way. The message just didn't get across well because it directly created conflict by causing the other to have to face and decide this way or that way. There's only one way and you have to choose. There's far more than one way and we're making choices all the time. It might not be obvious but life is being simplified. Everyone is doing it. It's just it's not always noticeable and it's not particularly conscious. Too many distractions, too many desires interfere with knowing who we really are. It might not ever be possible to know myself because in order to know myself I have to make myself the object of my consciousness, of my awareness and if I make myself the object of my awareness I can never know myself. My awareness, I can never know who I really am because I am not the object of my awareness. I am the awareness. I am the consciousness. I might know about myself, more about myself, but I won't ever know myself. Not in that way. It is easier essentially to know myself by letting go of what I am not, by discovering what I am not. That's much easier, to realise what I am not, to let go of what I am not and then discover what is there, what is left, what was hidden, covered. That is more real than deciding to find what I am. Then I could look forever and never find that answer. And that's the best I can do. If I am not challenging myself by putting myself into experiences where, for the most part, I have to disengage fairly quickly to return to a simpler state, then it isn't easy to recognise what it is that is there. In the early days, when I was still letting go of many things that I have now let go of, the experience was required to show me, to point me in the right direction, to reveal something about myself I had overlooked, not realised, hadn't been able to see. It took some time in many cases to really understand what simplifying my life needed to look like. I have simplified my life tremendously. The simplification aspect hasn't changed a great deal, certainly not in the last year, maybe not in the last two, essentially. In the first year of this VANS experience, it was about adapting and adjusting and recognising, and there were simplifications that were going to take place. In the second year, it's more about maintaining and sustaining and recognising those things that were changed and did work, do work, and lessened until an idea arises that supersedes that. At this moment, that is the simplest it can be. Those ideas, if they arise, happen spontaneously. Suddenly I just notice something I didn't see before, I didn't think about before like that, and it comes with a feeling of, I can use this to make a change that just simplifies things a little more, creates an efficiency that is what I am naturally looking for. Naturally, it's important to be simple, and simple has simplicity and efficiency. Efficiency creates simplicity. Simplicity allows for efficiency. The two are synonymous. For the most part, it just happens naturally now. I sit, I have a very small space to notice, and I see, and I know, and everything is familiar, and everything is in its place, where it is, where it needs to be. I don't have to think. I can experience periods of thoughtless presence, and it is in that stillness that I know who I am, or I know as much about myself as I can in this moment, and I recognize a balance, a harmony that feels important, and immediately something occurs unexpected that needs to be dealt with but isn't straightforward. The disharmoniousness of it is so obvious that I understand the importance of assorting it straight away, understanding how it fits, the effect it has had, and altering things to make it balance, and that becomes my focus, my attention. Nothing else. I can't really live in the way that I might have been moments before until it's sorted, until it fits, and then I can return to a zero state and process it and understand what has changed. Until the next time it occurs. I don't have access to a feeling of knowing that I used to think I had access to. I felt I understood things about life, about the world, that had gone beyond the usual, and that gave me an advantage. In many ways, I don't carry that knowing anymore. It could be it has simply it has simply become part of who I am. I just naturally act in that way. I don't have to change anyone else. I don't have to have anyone understand who I am and why I do what I do. They either will or they won't if there are people who are looking just by what it is they see. It may be right or it may be wrong. It isn't important. The only time it matters is if, and it happens very rarely now, someone actually asks me a genuine question. They really want to know something about myself. Why do I do this? Why do I do that? And if they do, I'll answer them as honestly as I can, because not only do they deserve to receive the most honest answer I can give, but it gives me an opportunity to actually formulate what it is my answer would be. I don't know what I'm going to say until I actually say it, and in saying it, in that moment anyway, it gives me an opportunity to crystallize what it is that is real for me. Until that occurs, I don't know what I think about many things. I don't know what I know about many things. I just am who I am, and I do what I do. I don't have to explain it or justify it, although I might, certainly afterwards, wonder why I made that choice, and I'll look at it. I might just have to come to accept that that was the choice I made, and I deal with the results of that choice, just as we all do. But the idea is to be conscious and aware, and so on the whole, I like to know, I like to make choices that reflect and represent what is in my best interest, what works best for me in the world that I inhabit. I try to have a very small footprint, so that what I do doesn't have to affect or affect others in a minimal way, because they have the right to make choices that affect their own world directly. I don't feel like I have the right to intrude on their world, just because I think I might benefit in some way. And at the same time, their world intrudes on my world very little too, as little as possible. I've learned many ways to be invisible, anonymous. They don't need to see me, they don't have to see me, I don't need to exist, for the most part, at least that's how it feels. I am sure that many people see me and have thoughts about what it is that they see, and think that they know something. We all like to pigeonhole and label, and I dare say that there are many ideas out there, all the ideas about people that people might have, if they think about me, that have nothing really to do with me, and yet they believe that they have seen correctly, have seen correctly, because it is based on the perspective that they have about how they live in their own world. I don't have to do that about them. The idea for me, so that I'd carry no weight of them, is not to make judgments about them, not to decide I know something about them, based on what it appears is going on. I might be right, but I also might be very wrong, and carrying something that isn't right actually is heavy, it creates weight, and I might not even know that I have this heavy thing, because I believe I have the truth, when in fact I do not. So it's much easier to allow for more than one possibility to exist, and leave it at that. To just allow things to be as they are, to not decide I know what is going on, to not get involved in having decided, and then deciding that I must be affected or offended by what I've decided. That's, for me, a much simpler way to live. Yes, there are times when I can feel I am affected by the thought that I am having about the thing that I am seeing, and then I'm in a dilemma, because instead of just acting naturally, spontaneously, I might procrastinate, think about it, have to decide something, which can be quite a difficult thing to do. Part of me wants to continue in this simplicity, in the lack of any of this awareness, and another part of me can't unsee, unknow what I now am aware of, but then has to choose do I want to do anything about it? Should I? Does it matter? Do I need to be involved? Those things aren't easy to deal with, especially when one is practicing thoughtless presence. And that's as far as I've got. That's where I am. Now, there's obviously more. There's always more. And if I'm not experiencing more, then at this time at least, I don't need to.