NeoCommandments

Ten Neocommandments

Human beings have been enslaved by divisiveness--the product of binary thinking for too long. It is time to eradicate the commonsenselessness of zero sum values and embrace the Neocommandments which in truth are not commandments at all but declarations. In fact the

Ten Neocommandments are a new Declaration of Independence.

1. There are no laws only provisional theories

2. Every perception is a reflection of yourself

3. Everything is meaningful but nothing is important

4. Accept responsibility for what is

5. Everything is as it should be--right here, right now

6. Whatever you resist will persist

7. Every belief is true

8. Every belief is false

9. Every belief is true and false

10. Every belief is neither true nor false

The most powerful of the Ten Neocommandments are the first and the last (number 10). If humanity accepts that every law is merely a provisional theory human constraints will indeed be surpassed. The more tenaciously we cling to our cherished beliefs the less likely we are to be liberated from them. We must release our grip to extend our grasp. If we can accept that none of our beliefs and none of the hard facts and laws that we have been taught are simply true or false we will soar like eagles beyond the sphere of our wildest dreams. Only belief in boundaries and limitations make them real.

Unlike the Ten Commandments the Ten Neocommandments preclude war for who will convince you to go to war if nothing is important enough to fight for? Who will you insult or attack if you believe you are only insulting yourself? As a child once told me, "what you say is what you are"!

The third Neolaw is the most immediately liberating. Is it true? Who cares? Try it on for size and see how it fits. Does it make you easier to live with? Does it make it easier to live? If you don’t like it throw it away. After all there are no laws--only Neolaws--which are really provisional theories. The essence of the law is to live lightly with humour and less seriousness.

The fourth Neolaw is probably the most frightening to accept and also the most empowering. If we learn to accept responsibility as a way of life, we discover empathy because we are forced to see beyond the protective walls of the defense mechanisms of fear. The power of the fourth Neolaw is best experienced. Just try it and see how the world begins to change.

The fifth Neolaw is about present moment awareness versus the passage of time. It is easy to accept a moment. I have noticed that even just the idea of thinking about the moment tends to be relaxing. Even in the midst of pain I have noticed that single-pointed awareness of the moment causes/provides complete relief. Furthermore if you feel pain or discomfort and if you simply remind yourself that in a moment “this too shall pass” then your fear will dissipate and the pain along with it. Pain is really just sensation. In fact one person’s pain is another’s pleasure because the difference is all in the mind.

The sixth Neolaw is profoundly moving and infinitely transformational. I have found that those who disturb us the most, teach us the most. Furthermore, if everyone and everything that moves us is indeed moved by us, resistance is simply futile so we may as well go with the Tao, as a monk would say. Be aware that the sixth Neolaw does not imply or condone a stance of passivism anymore than it does aggression. The passive aggressive resists and represses their aggression to no avail. On the other hand, if you tend to aggression you tend to resist repressed passivism, and if you tend towards passivism you repress aggression. Opposite impulses exist within us and ultimately a form of enlightenment that Buddhabot calls Omnipathos resists nothing (internally or externally) and embraces the entire universe. This is only the surface of the sixth Neolaw. The depths of significance are unfathomably deep.

The last four Neolaws derive from the awareness that every observation is inseparable from the observer. The concept is ancient but has only recently re-emerged into the awareness of the thoughtful. In the second century AD, the Buddhist master teacher Nagarjuna introduced a four-logic system in which statements about the world can be (1) true, (2) not true, (3) both true and not true, and (4) neither true nor not true (which Nagarjuna believed was the usual case). While this may seem counterintuitive it is reflected in the observations of quantum physicists who currently believe and have experimentally observed that light is (1) a wave (2) a particle (3) both a wave and not a wave, and (4) neither a wave nor not a wave. These final four laws are perhaps the most difficult to accept but once embraced they allow the most extensive rewards.