Best Of

These are simple stories of how the basest of material attachments, that we think we've transcended, can still roam freely under any spiritual clothing.
The meanings of the "mu & kwatz" speak only of where others have awakened from the limitations of their own dreamed storylines. They are only meant to say to a seeker that anyone, anywhere, anytime can find their own awakening. They appear mysterious only to prevent other seekers from mistakenly trying to mimic a form of an awakening that doesn't apply to them.

To discover the mu or kwatz that applies to you, find the very attachment which currently owns you and that you can not yet address. Face it as endlessly & squarely in all its forms as you can.
When freedom from this attachment eventually becomes more important than all of the identity that it offers you, then your own "mu or kwats" or freedom becomes possible.
Here, the practice itself is the mu or kwatz of your awakening.

There are no shortcuts to such an understanding that I know of.

I like the analogy I've heard a few people state. That the human mind is still on version 1.0 but we're living in world 5.0. Biology moves at a much slower rate than culture and technology.

I think our evolution brought us to a state selected for life in small groups and immediate environments. Today there are so many people living anonymously, we lack that connection in most of our interactions. Our intuitions towards the world are well tuned for what is happening in front of us (our lived experience), but society is so complex and interconnected our intuitions break down and our experience often doesn't match up with actual trends.

I think we're still the same. The minds aren't fundamentally different and neither is the body. The difference may be more in how quickly information is processed and how fast events arise and fade. Kids these days don't even need to finish the tv show to know the ending or they assume the remainder of the story. Likely because they've heard about a dozen similar stories, a dozen stories that seemed similar but with a bizarre twist at the end, a dozen similar stories that are similarly aware the viewer knows of twists and feigns a twist but doesn't twist...and so on. We all know those jokes and phrases that once were new and are now so over-used it's like beating a dead horse until it's a really really really dead horse that's super dead. Ever been on the receiving end of one of those stories? It's a practice in compassion and patience. Probably similarly being on the receiving end of incessant rambling of a kid trying to explain their favorite video games.

In the days of yore you'd catch a line or two at the local water-cooler, take it home, share it with your family or friends, contemplate on it and laugh on it as much as a week later. Now a quick scroll through any major social media and you've got multiple "days of old life-times" of content in less than an hour. Everyone does.

It starts to create a different view maybe. Sort of a hive-mind effect? Like a scatter plot. The more inputs the more visible the trend becomes. Don't need to complete each point necessarily to verify. Enough people have done that already. Just like enough people have listened to a story and gone on a journey and reported their findings in their own unique ways. Collect the stories rather than take one yourself and find the pattern then grow from there instead. Of course without the first-hand experience or trust in someone experienced in the ways of the stories, this sort of short-hand understanding can be misleading but there are modern safeguards which with a little insight can be put in place as well to prevent that.

Something else that comes to mind, I think of both elephant and hummingbird living on the same earth and even though their experience of life and time is quite different, that doesn't change the properties in the world in which they both live nor the interconnected nature of it. Maybe one is seen for the differences, and the other too for the differences, but fundamentally I think the difference in the individual experiences of the world is less than initially thought. And maybe in the sharing of each view, there is less difference to be found than what is searched for. Furthermore, each contributing in their own necessary way to the overall health of the ecosystem which sustains them and others.

..I think I needed to write.

Where'd you find the audio for that story, @Jeroen? I'd be interested in giving it a listen.

The world is much the same, but the noise in our minds is a bit different, and, perhaps, louder. More difficult to tune out, but that seems to be the task.