Pain

How are you doing, my friends? This time, I’m going to talk about pain. A heavy one, isn’t it?

Every creature seems to have pain from time to time and eventually dies. If the Creator existed in the first place, why did He or She create this mechanism of life and death? What purpose does pain serve? This is not only a philosophic question but also an empirical question.

Pain is ingrained in biology. As the most primitive form of biology, let’s take a microbe for example. A microbe has to eat to sustain its life. Hunger is a kind of pain, isn’t it? I suppose so. Hunger is painful and eating is pleasurable, right? Hunger motivates a microbe to move and find something to eat. So let’s say that pain creates movement. If pain doesn’t exist, everything will come to a halt. I think this is a fundamental understanding of pain.

Furthermore, as human beings, we have a subtler form of pain: boredom. When we are bored, we are motivated to know something, get emotional or intellectual stimulation. So eventually, we created highly charged civilizations.

We could say that most of us don’t like pain. We don’t like to suffer. So some scientists may look into eliminating pain from our DNA. If this attempt succeeded, what would happen next? We would get bored to death.

Some people think that there are only pleasure and pain in this world. An unhappy but realistic idea. The dynamic between pleasure and pain creates a sense of power in human society. We feel a sense of power when we get excited, right? In fact, some people get excited from pain. Some people use chemicals to get excited. Esoterically this is all about the first three chakras. We all have the animal nature or the survival instinct in a sense. Historically, we have been obsessed with the relation between master and servant for a very long time.

In this pitiful worldview, there’s no room for love, of course. Without any trace of unconditional love, we don’t think there is more than pleasure and pain, indeed. Concepts of the divine are bullshit for those who don’t know love. I don’t blame them. It is a difficult situation because love isn’t explainable in word.

Quite naturally, the lack of love leads to meaninglessness, psychological suffering and depression. Are we hopeless? Yes and no. This may sound ridiculous for some people, but I think that charity is very important. Beyond hypocrisy, the act of giving brings us back to our true nature that is love. Charity is a gradual process. We can practice giving and also receiving in families and relationships. So simple and obvious, yes?

OK, that’s all for today. Thank you for listening.

What Do You Want?

Hi guys. What’s up? This time, I’m going to talk about what we want in life. Again, let’s not make it a philosophic question. You desire something, right? That’s what you want in life. Whether desire is good or bad, that’s a philosophic question. But I don’t go there.

Many people talk about how to attract what we desire. Indeed, if it’s possible, we all want to know how. The key seems to be imagination. I don’t assure you that imagination brings you what you want materially. Instead, I can assure you that imagination creates specific feelings in you. First off, let’s imagine that you already have what you want, whatever it is. Imagine with passion, feel it, and then drop all the conditions around this feeling. Do this over and over again. Then you can feel the feeling itself without any conditions, at ease. Very simple, right? This method would help a lot.

Maybe rich people can have it all materially. They can live in the best villas in the world, they can eat the best foods in the world, they can wear the best clothes in the world, they can have the best prostitutes in the world, they can take the best drugs in the world and get high all the time, but in most cases, still they don’t feel happy. They are satisfied AND unhappy.

When you can’t get what you want, you are unsatisfied, right? But don’t confuse satisfaction with happiness. You can be unsatisfied AND happy, because it is possible to feel happy immediately with the help of imagination. That’s what it is! If you are completely satisfied, you won’t get out of bed, meaning you’re dead. Desire is simply a metabolic function of human mind.

We have a choice to make. For example, I would think like this: I haven’t dated anyone, but I want someone, so I’m unhappy. Careful, this is a thinking process, not THE fact, right? On the contrary, I can say, I am happy because I haven’t dated anyone, as if the current situations were what I really wanted. Then I can think of merits of the circumstance, such as that no one tells me what I should do, I am free, I can spend all the time and money only for myself, et cetera, et cetera. A quick turn of thinking mind. Even if you have never had a girlfriend or a boyfriend, yes, you can be happy anyways. Even if no one appreciates your work, yes, you can be happy anyways.

I don’t talk about renunciation here. If you have many lovers and problems with that, so be it, you can be happy anyways. If you have plenty of money and problems with that, so be it, you can be happy anyways. You can start with the status quo. Is this difficult? No way! This is not a crazy idea but a solid way to relax and start enjoying life. In fact, if you want to be happy right away, this would be the easiest way, except when you are in physical pain.

You don’t have to agree with me, but please reflect on this idea. All right? That’s it for now. Thank you for listening.

Are You Happy?

Hi guys, nice to see you. My name, you can’t pronounce it. Call me Menet if you will. I am Japanese. I’m not a native speaker of English, so please be generous in my errors. In fact, I don’t speak English. In this program, I write a script and then read it. I’m not a teacher, nor a scholar, nor a healer. I’m not married. I don’t have children. And I don’t work at all. I am nothing, in your view perhaps. So please don’t follow me, but just reflect on the contents of this program, so that they will nourish you. All right?

This program is concerned with happiness, your personal happiness. I don’t talk about impersonal awakening, and I never will. To be honest, I don’t understand anything about Non-duality teachings or creating reality teachings.

Are you happy? Let’s not make it a philosophic question here. We all know how happiness feels like, don’t we? Happiness is not a concept but a feeling, right? If you’re unhappy, all the philosophical pursuits are but a failure. We all know that. Spiritual teachers say they finished searching. They mean they ended the search for Truth, because they found it, probably. Very metaphysical indeed. But I would say, we will end the search for happiness when we are actually happy, when we no longer have to imagine feeling happy. After all, in spirituality nothing matters except whether of not you are truly happy.

But how de we get there? In this first episode, I propose three methods. These are the basis of what I will talk about in the future.

One. You decide to feel happy first thing in the morning. You say like this: “I decide to feel happy no matter what.” You make the decision, that’s all. Very simple, right?

Two. This is a fundamental method which dates back thousands of years. I call this method “nurturing heat”. First, think about what you love to do the most. Playing baseball, eating candies, going shopping, talking with your friends, dating with your partner, anything will do. You feel passionate, right? Some people call it Shakti or Kundalini. I simply call it heat. Please find this heat, right now. Don’t worry, everyone can do it. Second, separate all the situations that provoke this passion, the heat in you from the heat itself, and feel only the heat inside you. Without any conditions, you can concentrate on the heat itself, right? Third, make the heat growing and growing, everyday. Each day, it feels as if the heat were stronger than the day before, more and more. That’s what I mean by “nurturing heat”, OK? If it’s easier for you, picture in your mind a fire altar and a flame, not necessarily in your body, but inside. I don’t say intensify the image of this altar. This is not an exercise for the so-called visualization. I say nurture your feeling.

Three. This is rather supplementary. Close your eyes and imagine a space where nothing exists, as if even you didn’t exist. Be vacant or dumbfounded for about 30 seconds, 2 minutes at the most, once a day.

You would think these methods have nothing to do with happiness, but they sure do from my perspective. If you need a sort of textbook somewhat corresponding to this program, I would recommend The Teachings of Tempu by H. E. Davey, although I don’t intend to disseminate the Japanese culture. That’s it for now. Don’t hesitate to contact me by email! Thank you for listening.