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[Music] happy holidays this year santa is bringing to you the gift of philosophical insight about the profound nature of creation and destruction so usually we tend to think of creation destruction as two opposite things and we also don't see the relativity of destruction we don't think that destruction is just destruction for everybody without realizing that it's actually a matter of perspective so we're going to bring together some previous concepts from previous episodes that i've talked about we're going to talk about concepts from the episode understanding bias very profound episode go check that out we're going to be talking about relativity check out my episode called understanding relativism part one i'm also gonna have a part two and a part three in the future so stick around for that uh we're gonna be talking about differences of perspective we're gonna be talking about dualities check out my three-part series called understanding duality part one part two part three that's going to play a big role here so let's really look at this duality of creation versus destruction a lot of times when i'm speaking about god or people in general spiritual people talk about god we tend to say god is the creator or the creator uh creator with a capital c and then if you're trying to be a smart ass you might say well why don't we call god the destroyer isn't god also the destroyer after all in hindu religion there's shiva and the the shiva rendition of god is god as the destroyer and what's more fundamental creation or destruction you might wonder well we're going to make sense of all this here now of course as you should probably already be aware if you're into non-duality is that this is a duality that all dualities ultimately collapse that's a principle i've talked about in the past so of course these are all going to collapse into each other and there's really no difference between creation destruction but let's explore this with some examples and really take a look at how this works so look humans are very selfish creatures we're very biased and our mind tends to have a a fixed rigid sort of objective standard for what is destruction what is creation and we tend to ascribe negative qualities to destruction and positive qualities to creation but that's a function of how we're defining creation relative to ourselves and destruction relative to ourselves so uh we don't see the profound interconnectedness between creation and destruction so basically the ego mind because it's so selfish if something is harming the ego mind then the ego mind tends to label that thing as destructive and bad or negative and then if something is helping the ego mind to flourish and to survive then the ego mind tends to label that thing as constructive or creation it's promoting the construction literally the construction of the self or the finite ego and and then we just kind of go about our lives like this and we don't really question it so let's question this though so for example there's this popular notion of you know the term weapons of mass destruction you've heard of this term weapons of mass destruction but let's look at this so like let's say a nuclear weapon would be considered a weapon of mass destruction so you detonate a nuclear weapon like during world war ii in uh hiroshima and nagasaki and you would think well clearly that's a destructive act you might even say why would god allow for such a destructive act to occur you know the wiping out of these two cities but notice that to wipe out these two cities you actually need to create the nuclear weapon so the nuclear weapons creation itself to have that weapon to detonate that was a creative act first of all notice that so there's that link between creation and destruction every tool that exists that can be used to destroy whether it's a gun a bomb a virus or whatever else it had to be created that's sort of the irony in the paradox here and there's a deep reason for that right in a sense that like if you want to erase something from a piece of paper you need an eraser and an eraser is an actual existing thing and in fact when you're erasing something you're erasing some pencil marks on a piece of paper you are literally erasing the eraser as it is wiping off the graphite or the ink from the paper and eventually the eraser itself gets erased in the process likewise when you detonate a nuclear weapon the nuclear weapon itself gets destroyed in the process isn't that interesting but first it had to be created of course the cities that are being destroyed also had to be first created for them to be destroyed otherwise what do you have to destroy but this is still the superficial layer there's an even deeper connection between creation destruction notice that actually when you're detonating a nuclear weapon normally we think of it as destruction but notice that's a bias we have because we're looking at it from sort of a human-centric point of view and a selfish point of view actually the detonation of a nuclear weapon is an act of creation notice this how so well you're creating energy you're creating heat you're creating light you're creating fire you're creating a mushroom cloud that's all creation even furthermore we could say that actually you're creating piles of rubble from all the buildings that are destroyed so really what's happening here is not any objective notion of destruction you see i want you to notice the relativity and the subjectivity of what you're calling destruction and creation because it's not so simple it's not so obvious from the universe's point of view from god's point of view we might say the universe can't really tell the difference between creation and destruction because they're literally the same activity it says humans who are projecting our own subjective biases and sort of skewing the way we're using these labels the way we're thinking about what's really going on in the universe in the universe what's going on is you have a field of consciousness that's all that exists an infinite field of consciousness and this field of consciousness is imagining and holding different forms a building a cat a tree a dog a human a city a mushroom cloud whatever think of it like a tv screen this tv screen can render different forms and images but the problem is that these images and forms they conflict with each other this is the finite nature of finite forms it has to be this way or that way it can't be both ways you either have a cat or a dog but you can't have a cat and a dog in the same place at the same time otherwise you don't have a cat or a dog you have something else maybe a hybrid between the two but that's not the same thing as a cat and a dog so so really what i want you to i want you to start to think of creation destruction more as a process of transformation that's how you sort of unify the two into a single force what's really happening is that consciousness is transforming itself all the time see my episode called understanding impermanence that's one of the principles of buddhism um that you should study and contemplate and start to notice all around you right consciousness is is constantly fluid and it's impermanent it's changing forms it's shape-shifting remember in my episode about aztec non-duality called aztec non-duality i talk about toyota or god as being an infinite shape shifter so that's really what god as creator is it's a shape shifter but for it to shift shapes it has to let go of old shapes and adopt new shapes and that's the process of life and death or creation and destruction so even when you detonate that that nuclear weapon and you destroy a whole city you are actually creating that's a creative act you're creating rubble you're creating death you're creating blood you're creating guts you're creating radiation you're creating disease and sickness and these are all in a sense things that need to be created now of course from the human point of view this might seem nasty ugly brutish evil whatever but these are just our subjective judgments after all who's to say what is creation what is destruction you might go even a level further you might say actually the detonation of those nuclear weapons created peace where before there was war so the destruction of those cities led to a new level of stability and peace in the world ending world war ii now you can argue about whether it was necessary whether it was an excessive use of force you can of course you can argue all those things i'm not i'm not interested in debating that here you could make a good case that you didn't need to drop these nuclear weapons on japan and you could still have created peace by other means sure okay fine those are just little minutia matters of minutia um but i just want you to see that a lot of the violence that happens in the world is actually part of a larger creative process i want you to start to see that because otherwise it's difficult for your mind to make sense of violence war genocide other sorts of quote-unquote evil and selfish acts that happen all the time in the news and throughout human history for example you might think that and by the way don't get me wrong i'm not saying this to justify any kind of activity so what i'm saying here is completely neutral in terms of uh like morals or normativity in terms of like what you should do i'm not making any prescriptions i'm not making any rationalizations for why something was good or bad that's a complete misunderstanding of what i'm saying here so i'm not saying that the dropping of these nuclear weapons was a good thing or a bad thing we're not interested in that here this is a discussion about the deeper metaphysics of what we actually mean by creation destruction right so i'm going to be giving some more uh disturbing and um radical examples here that might be a little distasteful and offensive and i don't want you to get the idea that i'm somehow trying to justify this activity um i'm not i'm just trying to get you to question to see things from different perspectives so for example notice that like you might say well the holocaust was a purely destructive act it wasn't an act of creation but is that actually true take a look at what the holocaust was in an objective sense not from your human biases see um you might say well oh you know on the surface of it it looks like you know you're killing millions of jews and gas chambers that seems like a very destructive act what are you creating there nothing is being created nothing positive has been created in that process it's just uh shameless destruction but look at it from the point of view of the people who initiated the holocaust let's say hitler and his henchmen what were they trying to do were they doing it purely from a destructive point of view no they were to them it was actually a means towards a creative end what was their creative end what was their creative vision their creative vision was to create like a pure germanic um you know uh race to cleanse their society of what they perceive to be parasites and of what they perceive to be impurities and evil so in their minds and i'm not saying this is right or wrong i'm just saying in their minds the way they framed it is that the holocaust was a means of creating that ideal society that they wanted as twisted as that might seem to us today um you see so for them it was actually a creative act and so what i'm trying to just show you with these examples is that the line between what is creation destruction is very relativistic and very subjective and it's not so clear for example let's take a look at the um american revolution the founding of america as a country now if you're american and you're like an american patriot you tend to see the revolutionary war as an act of creation america was literally forged in the waging of the war you know with george washington and the founding fathers you know rising up against the uh britain and against the king and the monarchy and all this and you know constructing a constitution very very creative but that's how americans frame it from the american point of view which is biased you know like if you look at it from the british point of view the creation of america was the destruction or the loss of a british colony so which one was it was it an act of creation or an act of destruction is the glass half full or is the glass half empty and what's the difference you might even say that in a certain sense the creation of america was the ultimate destruction of the british empire it was like one of the first dominoes that fell in the british empire which over the next 100 years or so collapsed one domino at a time um how about 9 11 you might say well obviously 911 is an act of destruction that's from the american point of view but from the point of view of the people who were perpetrating 911 bin laden let's say and his henchmen and allies um from them for them it was an act of creation in the sense that in their minds they were initiating an attack on an aggressor that was subjugating them in their own home countries in the middle east and not allowing them to create the kind of countries and the kind of organizations and governments that they felt they were entitled to in their own countries you know they wanted an islamic state that was very theocratic and religious and very medieval in a certain sense and and america was destroying that and by attacking america you were creating space to be able to create that kind of thing for yourself in the middle east now whether that actually panned out or not you know that's a matter of debate um but that's how it was framed in their mind furthermore notice that the destruction the actual physical destruction of the world trade center that led to the creation of piles of rubble and debris um of smoke a fire now you might say well leo but these things are worthless they're not as important as the the buildings that were there but again do you notice that that's your bias the universe doesn't share that bias to the universe the difference between the world trade center standing in its full glory versus laying there as a pile of rubble and you know twisted concrete and a fireball and and cloud and smoke of of debris like it from the universe's point of view one is not more preferable than the other see and which one is more preferable to you depends on your point of view if your office is in that building then you very much don't want it to be a pile of rubble on the other hand if you perceive that the people in that building are doing something wrong then for you maybe it's a good idea that the building was destroyed you see and so this explains a lot of the violence that happens in the world a lot of the violence that happens in the world is actually people who are trying to do something creative but they need to destroy something to create space for the creative thing that they want to create because a lot of times there's an obstacle and there's a trade-off between having one thing existing versus another thing existing furthermore notice that the destruction of the world trade center led to the creation the space was opened up for creating the new building the freedom tower i think it's called whatever it's called now there's a new building in that spot that new building couldn't exist there unless the old building was destroyed now i'm not saying it was good or bad the old building was destroyed i'm just saying that it's just like a physical or even a metaphysical fact that you had to destroy the first building to create the second one because you couldn't create them both at the same place at the same time so really if you want to integrate creation instruction you can kind of zoom out and see it in a bigger picture context you can see that really what happens is a transformation occurred reality is a never-ending process of transformation self-transformation so um the world trade center that used to be there was transformed into the freedom tower that's standing there now and then in 100 years that freedom tower may maybe demolished and turned into some new third building and so this is going to keep happening and this is how reality works so everything is transformation the problem is that our minds because we ourselves are forms we're attached to being finite forms within this constantly churning ever transforming field of consciousness that we have a bias of our own to maintain our form and so because of this we tend to label those things that threaten the perpetuation of our forms as as being negative destructive or evil but actually notice that with the death of your body it's not just that your body is going to be destroyed it's really that your body is going to be transformed your human physical body is going to rot and decay let's say if you get buried underground it'll rot and decay which will lead to the creation of maggots and worms and flies and bacteria viruses and plants and grass and trees the roots of the trees under which you are buried will suck up your nutrients and will use the nutrients from your body to literally grow and blossom flowers and bear fruits which then birds will eat those fruits or you know hummingbird will come by and suck the nectars from that flower that has blossomed from your corpse and then that your literally the atoms and energy in your body and corpse will feed that hummingbird through the nectar and then that hummingbird will lay an egg and then from that egg will hatch a new hummingbird and then that hummingbird will be eaten by some other bird when it dies and so the cycle of life will just continue and all of that will literally be the transformation of your body into all these other forms you see but you don't care about any of that because all you you're selfish all you care about is just preserving your body you don't care about how by preserving your body look what you're doing you're denying the nutrients to the trees you're denying food to worms and to maggots and flies and you're denying the birth of new hummingbirds see so it's a very selfish act of youth just staying alive and preserving your form because while you're preserving your form you're literally taking up some portion of the atoms and molecules and energy in the universe you're you're locking that energy into this particular shape which denies it the opportunity of turning into some other form or shape so because you exist as a human and because mankind exists as 8 billion humans on this planet there are as a result of that that energy and matter cannot be utilized to create more kangaroos more hummingbirds more trees more rats more flies and whatever else might be possible with all that matter and energy you see so who's to say what's really good and what's really bad here i want you to notice how subjective your idea of good and bad are when you're claiming to some form if you are that form or if that form helps you to survive as the form that you identify yourself to be notice you're gonna have a bias towards wanting to maintain that you're gonna rationalize in all sorts of ways for example if you're working for a corporation let's say you're working for a for a military defense contractor like lockheed martin and you are manufacturing missiles that are used in the middle east to bomb whatever either civilians or terrorists whatever probably a combination of both um you see because for your body to survive and for the bodies of your children to survive and to maintain their form you have to go to work to the you know to lockheed martin and you have to be creative to create missiles for them let's say as an engineer so you create these missiles these missiles are of course created weapons of destruction that will destroy stuff but the stuff you're destroying there it's helping you to feed your children and to feed yourself and to maintain your family and and so therefore now you're attached to maintaining the form of lockheed martin because if lockheed martin has a corporation loses its shape and form and devolves or dissolves goes bankrupt or whatever then you're going to lose your livelihood you can't now be creating missiles anymore and now your family's going to starve and perhaps your children will die because you can't get the medical care or whatever in the most extreme example right um so you're very much attached to creating missiles you're very much attached to voting in a certain way that helps you to maintain lockheed martin as a company to get your contracts subsidies maybe war is helpful for your company to flourish maybe if the war in the middle east ends then you're going to lose your job because they don't need to manufacture so many new missiles anymore and they don't need your services anymore and then how are you going to feed your children you see so when you look this person when this person is working at lockheed martin is that person being creative or destructive again the glass is simultaneously half full and half empty of course the person is being creative when he's engineering these missiles but at the same time these missiles are being used to to create destruction in the world but furthermore this additional layer is that the destruction that's created in the middle east you could you could argue that that destruction in the middle east helps to create the american empire right so you're not just fighting for the defense of lockheed martin you're also fighting for the larger collective of the american empire which also serves you as a citizen as part of the american empire it helps you because it lowers gas prices for you it lowers the the costs of goods and services of food and other things like that it gives you more military power more geopolitical power around the world this is why american empire is maintained through military force and so you're a beneficiary of that and hey so am i as an american citizen we're beneficiaries of that but at what cost right see we have to destroy in order to create think about it very primitively from the point of view of predator prey relationships in nature you have a wolf and a rabbit from the wolf's point of view hunting rabbits is a creative activity because he's creating a meal for himself when he hunts the rabbit and then that allows him to procreate and to feed his wolf pups pups and that's creative from the wolf's point of view but from the rabbit's point of view it's very destructive so which is it is it creation destruction because you see if the wolf doesn't destroy the rabbit then the wolf will destroy itself it'll go hungry it's pups will go hungry and they will end up just destroyed um and from the from the rabbit's point of view sort of the inverse of that by running away from the wolf successfully the rabbit is doing a creative act because this helps the rabbit to then procreate and to be creative um but then that that hurts the wolf and look at what's happening when the wolf eats the rabbit the wolf is actually transforming that rabbit energy into wolf energy and if the rabbit runs away from the wolf the wolf is going to die from hunger that wolf's corpse is going to lay on the ground it's going to feed the grass and the trees and the plants and the rabbit is going to feast off of the grass that is fertilized by the wolf's corpse so the rabbit by running away from the wolf is actually transforming in a more indirect way is transforming wolf energy into rapid energy it's not a perfect transformation there's also going to be grass energy and tree energy and fly enter maggot energy worm energy all sorts of other things are going to be trans the wolf is going to transform into we see it's very profound how all this works when you look at it from a sort of objective non-biased point of view isn't it very interesting so creation destruction is a duality which is really just two sides of the same coin and you can't have a coin with just one side this is the nature of reality so it's important to see how relativistic this is how subjective this is because this this this puts various kinds of things into into proper context you start to see reality more from god's point of view and then you can start to remove the judgment and the evil from reality you no longer see particular acts as being evil because you're not looking at it from a selfish lens anymore you're seeing it in a in a fuller more absolute context which integrates creation and destruction really fundamentally what i want you to see is that the creation of anything requires destruction at exactly the same place and time so the best way to see this is just imagine a blank piece of paper or canvas no matter what shape i decide to draw on this canvas let's say i just decided to just draw a circle it's like a solid circle solid sphere so i'm drawing that as i'm taking my paint brush and i'm drawing that solid sphere and filling it in i am simultaneously let's say i'm filling it in with a color like blue i'm simultaneously destroying the white canvas that was there you see how that works and it's like this with anything that's being created there's always a trade-off when you're creating something you're destroying at the very minimum you're destroying the emptiness that was there you're also destroying the potential for something else to be there so when i'm drawing this thing solid blue i'm destroying the possibility of it being red or yellow or any other color or any other shape see that this is a very fundamental aspect of all finite forms what do i mean by a finite form a finite form means it's definite and specific in some way so for example a red circle is a finite form a blue triangle is a finite form a black square is a finite form why is it finite well because it has a specific shape and color and characteristics to it which is not the totality of everything could possibly be it's just a small subset of what it could be right and so because it's just one possibility out of many possibilities that it's finite and the nature of every finite thing is that it occupies space and time and certain dimensions and characteristics it has which are precisely not some of its opposite characteristics if i draw a small circle then it's not a large circle if i draw a square then it's not a circle if i draw a green triangle then it's not a red triangle if i draw a cat then i'm not drawing a dog and so on and so this trade-off exists with every finite form and so does it matter whether we call god creator or destroyer well both are happening at the same time in a certain sense but if we take the duality between lowercase c creation and lowercase d destruction and we sort of unify that duality as i've done and explained in my series my three-part series understanding duality part one two three what we have is we have we can we can unify the two together transcend them into a higher absolute and that absolute would be creation with a capital c so creation with a capital c includes both lowercase secretion and destruction together and it unifies them together because truly what you become conscious of when you become conscious of the absolute is you become conscious that the only thing that exists in reality is an infinite field of consciousness this is it right here you're experiencing this infinite field of consciousness right now this field of consciousness itself cannot be destroyed it can't not exist because existence is an absolute so consciousness is absolutely existing that can't be changed but what can change is that consciousness can take different forms it can take different shapes or it can just be empty but when it's empty it's like a blank canvas it still exists it exists as emptiness and so you might say well isn't that destruction if if we just eliminate all the shapes and all the colors and all the sounds and all the phenomena then we it seems like we've destroyed the universe you haven't really destroyed it you've just made it empty it's just a blank canvas it still exists as a blank canvas see now you might wonder well can't i also destroy the blank canvas itself too and here's where it gets tricky no you can't because when it comes to like if we're talking about a painting the canvas that the painting is painted on is still a thing it's still a shape or a form and that of course you can destroy like if you're thinking of a white blank piece of paper you can destroy that whiteness that whiteness is not emptiness or even if you think about the the vacuum of of outer space you might say well that's emptiness it's just pitch black emptiness actually that's not emptiness the emptiness that i'm talking about is so empty that it's absolutely empty it's so empty that you couldn't empty it anymore there's nothing there for you to destroy you see um this absolute emptiness you can't get underneath that you can't destroy that it just is emptiness so what do you do with this what do you do with this knowledge well admittedly it's a bit abstract here in philosophical and you probably don't have an immediate idea of how to apply this in your life to make a bunch of money or whatever that's not the point though the point is to start to see reality see the structure of reality for how it actually is how it works and to appreciate just the structure just the appreciation of the structure changes your relationship to reality makes you appreciate reality more it's not about using this knowledge to do something with it although you could find ways to use it but um that's not the point the point is just to start to see reality clearly for what it is and also to distance yourself from your own biases and from your own selfishness and from your own limited perspectival ways relativistic ways of you know seeing events in the world so when you see a mass shooting on television ordinarily you think of it as just like oh it's just a a shameless act of destruction but this is a mistake and if you start to see reality in this way especially when you're watching the news you see a lot of destructive stuff in the news you're not putting into the proper context and you're not seeing how it's part of a larger process of creation and so in this way you actually get disconnected from the larger absolute flow of creation that is constantly ongoing in the world whether you're watching the news or you see a car wreck on the side of the road it's all an act of creation it's all an act of creation with a capital c it's all an act of transformation and so it's important to detach yourself from needing creation to be in in some specific finite way that suits you detach yourself and appreciate just the larger absolute flow of creation take yourself out of the picture and just appreciate the beauty of creation appreciate its brutality there are brutal aspects to creation sometimes you're gonna lose things that you really were attached to and that you really wish would have stuck around for longer whether it's your loved ones your pets your family your friends your spouse your children or even material objects like your car your fancy car that you just bought or whatever else or your own body it's all going to deteriorate and it's all going to be impermanent it's all going to change and shape you know shape shift and so uh ultimately the whole goal of spirituality is to detach yourself so much from this ever flowing shape-shifting process of creation such that you disidentify with any particular way creation ought to be ought to unfold or what shape it ought to take and to just enjoy whatever shapes it takes and to trust that whatever process it's going through that is the highest good and to just trust that and to be at peace with that and to surrender to that rather than trying to hold on and micromanage the whole process of needing to have it flow in whichever way you need it whichever way i need it because that's a losing game you're always going to lose that game and it's going to create a lot of suffering and frustration for you whereas if you are more wise you're going to realize that you your ego can't control this this process of creation is way too immense it's way too profound it's way too intelligent to be subject to the whims of your particular selfish needs and desires and so the only proper answer to this is to to surrender your own needs and desires to step aside and to to see that there's something much more profound and larger at work here that is way just beyond you and your personal human needs and the more you do that the more detached you become this is what spiritual detachment is about then um the more happy you can be independent of what's happening in the world and then even all that destructive evil violent stuff that is happening you see it in a proper context and it doesn't bug you as much and you're not judging it as much as normal people do and therefore it's not triggering you as much therefore you can maintain your peace and your happiness more than ordinary people do see how this works so it's a little bit abstract but at the same time uh really where it gets practical is in terms of how you relate to the activities and events of the world you can either get triggered and butt hurt by them or you can see them as something of a larger game that's being played and um and you can start to see the beauty even in the quote-unquote ugly and evil aspects of reality which means that you're integrating them which means that now this is in a certain sense an aspect of shadow work you're basically integrating your shadow and you're expanding your sense of self to include all of the richness and complexity of the shape of reality and you're adopting the entire flow of reality as your own identity as what you are and that is you moving closer towards the perspective of god the more you do that the more god-like you become until eventually you realize that you are the creator of this entire flow god is an infinite process of self-creation it's a dream that keeps creating itself over and over and over again that never ends and so your job spiritually speaking is to fall in love with yourself and this dreaming process fall in love with it more and more and more accept it more and more and more and more rather than trying to limit it or constrain it or cling to it it's the clinging and the constraining of it which is really the problem and so the wisest of us let go of that and that's difficult to do it's very difficult to do in certain situations but you try to you know you work on it you let go more and more and more until eventually you you just fall in love with the entire process itself very holistically you look at it very holistically and you fall in love with the entire process and this is the equivalent of falling in love with yourself or the equivalent of discovering that god is love or the equivalent of discovering infinite love the equivalent of discovering yourself as love which is really the whole point of of life and of reality is to discover deeper and deeper aspects of consciousness as love but of course that requires you surrendering all of the finite aspects of yourself and all your attachments and all the stuff that you cling to and it's also scary it takes courage it takes fearless fearlessness to do this and it takes selflessness to do this and so this is a lifelong process that you commit to and work on every single day you