tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-125062372024-03-13T20:30:08.236+00:00Lucid ExpositionReflections from the edgeRoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.comBlogger105125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-77810131883285061062012-11-29T15:26:00.005+00:002012-11-29T15:27:35.975+00:00This blog has movedOh, it's 7 years since I first started this blog. It's time to move on though. I find Wordpress a lot better than Blogger now, (sorry Blogger) and I've consolidated the best of this blog into my new blog, <i>Beyond The Dream.</i><br />
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You'll find my reincarnated blog at: </h2>
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<a href="http://beyondthedream.co.uk/">http://beyondthedream.co.uk</a></h2>
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Thanks for reading. See you there!<br />
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roryRoryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-40733725094840829532012-08-23T12:11:00.001+01:002012-08-23T12:11:18.319+01:00The End Is Always Nigh: Analysing Doomsday Mania<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The clock is ticking. Expectations are high. The much-heralded date of 21st December 2012 is less than four months away. A significant number of people genuinely believe that this is the day the world is going to end.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Exactly how it’s going to end is a matter of much debate. Is Jesus going to pop in to battle the antichrist? Are aliens going to invade? Is a giant asteroid going to destroy the planet? A timely super volcano eruption? Global societal collapse? A nuclear apocalypse? There are no shortage of theories in circulation; a number of them clearly utter nonsense, while others are more unnervingly feasible.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But apocalypticism (fixation with the end of the world) is nothing new. Mankind has been convinced the world is approaching an imminent and catastrophic end for thousands of years. And we’re still here.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Any historian will tell you that Christians have been feverishly anticipating armageddon since around the time the religion first started. That’s a pretty long history of disappointment, littered with countless failed predictions, yet they’re more ardent than ever. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(Incidentally, <a href="http://www.livescience.com/16606-failed-doomsday-predictions-apocalypse.html"><span style="color: #021eaa; letter-spacing: 0px;">here’s a countdown</span></a> of some of the most notable failed doomsday predictions, from the Millerites, Mormons and Heaven’s Gate cult to Nostradamus and Y2K. Worth noting that scientists and scholars have made more than their fair share of failed predictions as well).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The current intensification of doomsday mania is largely centred around the fast-approaching end date of the Mayan Long Count calendar. Most people actually know very little about it and tend to buy into the media hype, oblivious to the fact the Maya left NO prediction about what would happen on or around 2012. Experts are adamant that there’s no evidence that the Maya believed the end of their Long Count calendar would spell the end of the world. When the Long Count calendar ends...well, it simply resets again. Like most calendars do. The doomsday scenario that’s been tacked onto it appears to be an urban myth of the highest degree.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The psychology of apocalypticism and our fixation with imagined catastrophes fascinates me. I’m not sure how much research has been done in this area; I’ll have to dig deeper than a brief google search. What follows is my own analysis of what compels us to create, believe in and morbidly fixate on doomsday scenarios. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I believe doomsday mania is largely a projection of our own deepest fears and anxieties; which, as with most fears and anxieties, is ultimately rooted in fear of our own mortality.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This innate, primordial fear is basically hard-wired into us. The so-called reptilian brain is the oldest part of the human brain. It evolved with the primary function of ensuring physical survival and protecting us from harm. The reptilian brain is the seat of our ‘fight or flight’ mechanism and is always on the look out for potential threats to our survival. It came in pretty handy in prehistoric times when there were predators aplenty and simply staying alive was something of a challenge. These days, however (in certain parts of the world at least), we can step out of the front door without having to worry about our immediate survival. Yet the reptilian brain is still just as active now as it was back then. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’s a part of our physiology and psychology that’s designed to be forever on the look-out for threats. We may experience this as a persistent low-level anxiety in the periphery of our awareness. Because our physical safety is rarely in immediate danger, this anxiety is often projected onto other things, including relationships and social situations. Or indeed any number of the invented, conceptualised fears we might harbour in our minds; the myriad ‘what ifs?’ that we take to be reality, but which in fact are mere fantasy. As Mark Twain once remarked, “I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Ahh, the mind. It picks up on the persistent fear signals of the reptilian brain and tries to make sense of the input. If it can’t (and often there’s little reason for the signals the reptilian brain is sending out -- it’s just doing so because that’s what it’s wired to do) then it manufactures all manner of stories and narratives around that fear in an attempt to process reality. Its intent is noble; it’s trying to keep us safe. But in the absence of any legitimate threats to our survival, the mind gets us lost in never-ending fabrications and mental conceptualisations, which actually <i>distort</i> our perception of reality.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I first experienced the mind’s amazing ability to fabricate stories to explain the input it’s receiving many years ago when I was on holiday with my parents and sister as a child. I was fast asleep and my sister, bless her, decided it was time I woke up. She awoke me by getting a facial spritz spray and spraying it on my face (as you do!). I was in the middle of a dream at the time, but my outer senses obviously registered the sound and sensation of the spray. What happened was my mind incorporated the sound into my dream and I suddenly saw a can of coca cola being opened. In other words, my brain received an input (the sound of the facial spritz) but it didn’t know what it was, so it created a fabrication to explain the input -- a coke can being opened! </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The funny thing is, that’s what the mind is doing all the time. It’s receiving input and trying to match it to past experience. If it can’t process the input based on memory and knowledge, it simply spins a story based on the material it has at hand. It projects a superimposition over reality; something we then mistake as BEING reality. This is going on all the time! Most the time we don’t experience reality as it is, we experience it as we think it is.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It’d be easy to digress at this point, but bear with me.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Basically, as I’ve explained, we are hard-wired to feel our survival is always under threat. This primal fear is constantly being generated by a part of our brain that’s designed to keep us on our toes and on the look out for possible danger everywhere. If there does happen to be a legitimate danger, then the mechanism is fulfilling its function and we can respond appropriately. But if there’s no actual threat (and most of the time there isn’t), then the mind tends to fabricate reasons to explain why we’re experiencing this fear.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This includes, I venture, the notion that the world is approaching an imminent and horrific end. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It doesn’t matter whether the evidence supports this story or not. Most of us invest a lot of our sense of identity in our mental narratives. We’re all religious whether we know it or not. Our object of worship is the stories in our minds, our mental maps of ‘reality’. That’s why people are often literally willing to die to uphold their beliefs and viewpoints, and why so few people are genuinely willing to question their thoughts and beliefs.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I believe our obsession with doomsday, armageddon and mass annihilation is a projection of our deepest fears and anxieties and an extreme manifestation of our fear of mortality. It’s not something I see as particularly rational or likely. The Earth has been here a pretty long time and is likely to be around for a while yet. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This is NOT to say that we’re not faced with multiple and immense problems and challenges. We’ve reached a point in history where we face escalating issues on a number of fronts: ecologically, socially, politically and economically. Our species’ current mode of operating is largely responsible for these problems and in order to solve them, it will necessitate change at a fundamental level.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I know only too well that to sit down and start analysing all of mankind’s problems can lead to a sense of hopelessness and pessimism. There’s no denying that we’ve created a terrible mess. Yet each time we’ve been on the verge of immense catastrophe, something has happened to change the rules of the game. At our moments of greatest challenge, we often make our greatest breakthroughs: new innovations, new insights, new ways of doing things.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The human race rarely does things the easy way. We often have to be pushed to the brink before we’re forced to take stock of what we’re doing and why immediate change is necessary. But the breakthroughs come. When we’re shaken out of our slumber and forced out of our habitual reflex-response approach to living, we can be tremendously adaptable. Although mindsets are all too easily rigid and entrenched, consciousness is fluid and the ability to shift from one level of consciousness to another, particularly when forced by necessity, gives me cause for hope.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The world is not going to end on 21st December 2012. That’s my prediction, and I don’t often make them. But you can quote me on that. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The world is going to keep spinning as it always does. Yes, these are turbulent times. But if you leaf through the pages of any history book you’ll reach the inescapable conclusion that the entirety of recorded history has been turbulent. In many of respects things are better now than they ever have been. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As always, events come and go. Society changes and evolves. There’s an interplay of good and bad, and they always eventually balance each other out. That’s just the way life is. It all just happens; a continuous, spontaneous unfolding. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">My best advice is to let go of the mind’s fictional projections (particularly if they’re causing distress and misery, as they often do) and simply roll with life. Life takes care of itself, especially when we stop creating obstructions and just let it. I’ve never encountered a better approach to life than that offered by the Tao Te Ching. It advises us to let go of all concepts and to be open, relaxed, non-grasping and flexible, bending with the wind as and when it blows.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Life is really just lila, a play in consciousness. Without taking it too seriously, we can <i>respond appropriately to the needs of each situation</i>, using whatever abilities, skills and knowledge we have. In this way we can all contribute productively, particularly once we shift out of the overriding mentality of “what’s in it for me?” and instead focus on what we can give back to life. It’s so easy to get swept up by the dramas and strife and to project scenarios of doom and despair -- easy, but not exactly helpful. The secret to life is remaining in a state of peace and balance amidst its inevitable ups and downs. That’s our greatest gift to the world and the most resourceful state of mind we could possibly adopt. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">To be sure, no one can tell us what’s going to happen in the future. Maybe a giant comet will strike tomorrow and knock us all to oblivion? But why waste our precious, beautiful life worrying over imagined events? Stop, relax and enjoy life now! Ditch all that apocalyptic nonsense and just BE HERE NOW! It’s so easy to forget that, but it’s really the only way to live.</span></div>
Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-81093799316709428362012-08-18T14:55:00.000+01:002012-08-18T14:55:15.045+01:00Trapped by the mind: A portrait of human insanityIn the last post I spoke about how easy it is to be totally consumed by the mundane and to lose ourselves in an endless sea of trivia and pointlessness; distraction after distraction after distraction.<br />
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What is it with the human race and our distractions? Why do we so always feel the need to distract ourselves from ourselves?<br />
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Part of it is no doubt a response to the stressful, turbulent, unbalanced and dysfunctional society we live in, a society that's almost totally cut off from the natural balance of life. We're all victims of the capitalist/rampant consumerist agenda; brought up and conditioned to feel dissatisfied with ourselves, to feel that we're not good enough as we are, that we're not whole and complete and that in order to be happy we need to accrue as much money as we can in order to buy a whole lot of crap we don't really need in a world that's alarmingly being stripped of its resources.<br />
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We're programmed to be unhappy. Perhaps that's why we spend so much time trying to escape the basic unease we feel within. Most people simply aren't comfortable in their own skin and accordingly find it exceedingly difficult to sit alone in a room without things to occupy themselves. As Blaise Pascal noted, this is the source of all humanity's problems.<br />
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I believe this is because we don't like to be alone with our thoughts. Many of us aren't even consciously aware of our <i>inner monologue</i> -- the never-ending stream of thoughts constantly flowing through our minds -- even though, for most of us, it's present almost every moment of our waking lives. The funny thing is, it's not so much <i>us</i> that's thinking these thoughts, for they can be difficult to control and predict, rather it's more like the thoughts are thinking <i>us</i>. They arise and subside, constantly rumbling away like a talk radio station we're tuned into and can't switch off. <br />
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Although generally mundane, many people's inner monologue is not a pleasant one: it often comprises a torrent of abuse and negativity, focussing on the very worst in life, perceiving problems where none exist and generally creating a whole lot of needless upset. Life is actually very simple, but the mind makes it into something ridiculously complex, embellishing it with so much needless dramas and stress. The inability to disengage from the babble of the inner monologue is a dreaful affliction.<br />
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I wonder if this is a defect of sorts at our current stage of evolution. It seems to me that we're a species with minds so over-developed and out-of-control that it's causing wide-scale insanity.<br />
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Our education system fails us on so many levels, not least because we're not taught how to deal with our thoughts, emotions and the content of our psyche. We're taught just about everything except <i>ourselves</i>, so we're left without a clue as to who or what we are. Our understanding of ourselves is based wholly upon assumption and misidentification. We form an image of ourselves in our minds, one that is totally arbitrary and ever-changing and yet which we construe as being 'us'. It's usually quite a distorted and negative image. Our entire experience of reality, ourselves and others, is utterly distorted by our uncontrolled minds, which run rampant, causing unaccountable misery and suffering for ourselves and others.<br />
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This insanity can be seen all around us. You need only switch on the evening news to be reminded of the devastating effect of our individual and collective dysfunction. On a small scale it's reflected in dysfunctional relationships and our personal miseries (depression and anxiety are now pandemic in our culture, as well as anger and aggression) and on a larger scale it's evident in the corruption that's evident in virtually every organisation and institution, and most dramatically in wars, conflicts, genocide and terrorism. It's not a pretty picture, and it all stems from the mind, and from believing certain thoughts and beliefs.<br />
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The dysfunctions of the human mind are destroying us.<br />
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So what is the way out of this?<br />
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First of all, we need to stop trying to simply drown out the mind by losing ourselves in mundane and mind-numbing activities or behaviours. I mean, getting drunk might have the desired effect for a short space of time (it dulls and numbs the mind, often making us feel good), but it's not exactly a long-term solution. It does nothing to address the underlying problem and when the hangover hits you'll feel ten times worse than before. We've been playing out our addictions and compulsive behaviours for what seems like lifetimes. Surely we can see by now that THEY DON'T WORK. <br />
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The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. That might very well be the human race's epitath. Waking up to reality means finally acknowledging that what we're doing <i>isn't</i> working and that we need to stop doing it. Instead we need to do something else, something that might be radically different to what we've been accustomed to in the past.<br />
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If the problem is our mind distorting our perception of reality, then surely the solution must involve taking control of the mind? Until we learn to control our mind, we are controlled <i>by</i> it, and this results in the succession of nightmares the human race has created throughout history. No other species is as inherently destructive and as pathologically insane as the human race, because no other species has such an over-developed cognitive faculty. The solution, according to one Zen Master could be concisely summed up as: "no mind, no problem."<br />
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But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The first step is always simply being aware and seeing things as they are. We can't solve a problem until we've first clearly identified that it <i>is</i> a problem. Denial is another defining human characteristic and it's incredibly hard to do anything so long as we're intent on denying the reality of the situation. Denial keeps us entrapped in the mind-created prison of our personal and collective suffering. <br />
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When we're willing to look at the situation openly, honestly and without whatever old baggage, beliefs and dogmas we've been clinging onto, we can finally see things as they are, and only then are we in a position to do something about it. Freedom is then within our grasp.<br />
<br />Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-434695238862931252012-07-09T13:18:00.000+01:002012-07-09T14:33:57.372+01:00Don't lose yourself in the mundane!Something I'm becoming ever more aware of is the importance of not
losing ourselves in the mundane humdrum of everyday existence. Let's
face it, it's so easy to lose ourselves in the neverending tasks,
duties, responsibilities and, worse yet, trivialities and distractions,
that are always demanding our attention and devouring our time, focus and
life energies.<br />
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To an extent this is unavoidable. We have to exist in this world, we
have to eat, sleep and get up in the morning, eat again, work or study,
take care of our responsibilities, pick up the kids from school, feed
the cat and walk the dog. That's just the way it is and it's best to
take care of these things with the right mindset -- a mindset of ease
and grace, which helps enable our lives to flow smoothly and without too
much obstruction. I heartily recommend the approach of karma yoga,
wherein our every action is undertaken with an attitude of devotion and
detachment, for everything we do is offered up to the benefit of all life.
If the busiest and most stressed of people could consciously adopt this
mindset, a great deal of their stress would simply evaporate. Worth a
try, no?<br />
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Where things get really sticky is the area of leisure time. We've done
what we needed to do during the day and what time we have left over has
to be filled somehow, right? So we plonk ourselves in front of the
television and spend hours watching soaps and reality shows or
whatever else tickles our fancy. If there's nothing on the TV, we could
always while away the time gossiping on the phone or by text, or catch
up with our social networking? Or we might read magazines or books we secretly know aren't
worth the trees they're printed on, or trawl the internet watching silly
videos on YouTube and engaging in flame wars with people who dare to
have opinions that differ to our own on internet forums.
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We'll do whatever we can to keep ourselves engaged. Only we're generally <i>not</i> very engaged while doing those things. Instead, we're kind of <i>unengaged</i>:
unengaged from life, from the world around us, from other people and
from ourselves. Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing inherently
wrong with any of the above activities in themselves. But what may be
harmful is using them compulsively as a means of distraction and escape.
I always used to be fascinated by the concept of 'escapism'. It always
seemed a strange notion to me. What is it we're trying to escape? I
believe what we're generally trying to escape is ourselves.<br />
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Most people spend an inordinate amount of time trying to distract themselves…from themselves. Our
culture is almost designed to facilitate this. There's an infinite
number of distractions, each seeking to consume our attention and numb
our minds. It's a never-ending merry-go-round and one that's
self-perpetuating; for once you've lost your attention in one
distraction, it usually remains there until the next supercedes it. And
that's the way we generally like it. This is what I call being lost in the mundane. It's pandemic in our culture: it's 'normal'.<br />
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The problem is, we can easily spend our <i>entire lives</i> lost in the mundane,
never taking the time to consider what's truly important: never stopping to
ask who we are, what we're here to do and how we can make a
difference in the world. I remember being at a funeral and when the
minister stopped to talk about the person who'd died, aside for the
obvious factual statistics, about all I remember was "she loved watching
her soaps". I mean, when you get older, you're wholly entitled to enjoy
your soaps and that's wonderful. But I remember being struck by a
sobering thought: what if, when it comes to my funeral, about all that
can be said of me was that I liked watching TV? That thought filled me
with horror. The thought of being so totally side-tracked by the mundane
that TV programmes and entertainment become more important than my truest priorities, hopes and dreams was enough to jolt me awake.<br />
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It's pretty clear to me that we're not here to spend our lives watching TV, reading trashy books or picking fights with strangers on the internet. I can't
tell you why you are here; only you can figure that one out, but
really, you must take the time to do that and to make it a priority.
Otherwise you'll probably tend to slip into mental default like everyone else and
lose yourself in the endless sea of distractions that seek to swallow
and entrap your minds, numbing you into a false sense of satisfaction (or stupor). We get totally lost in the matrix when that happens; with no idea who
we are or what we're here to do...just totally consumed by the phenomenal dream.<br />
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Next up: analysing WHY we seek perpetual distraction and why this is causing immense dysfunction in our lives individually and collectively.Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-35852676335567303592012-05-17T13:09:00.002+01:002012-05-17T13:13:00.357+01:00The silence wants nothing<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">This is kind of an addendum to the last post, as I felt compelled to clarify something. The overall message of the ‘Living Without Rules’ essays was essentially a simple one, and one that could probably be summed up as: stop living by the rules and demands of the mind, and instead ‘drop into’ the expanse of wordless stillness that lies at the core of your being, and let action arise from there. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It’s not easy talking about this kind of stuff. In India there’s an entire vocabulary -- heck, an entire <i>language</i> -- for defining and understanding the various states of mind and consciousness, concepts that are quite alien to most people in our Western culture. </span></span>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">You can only really understand this by having experienced it yourself. The good thing is that what I’m talking about is replicable. There’s a science to it. It might sound very subjective, but it’s actually objective -- and with a little self-investigation, just about anyone can verify it for themselves. </span></span>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">There are prerequisites, however, such as a reasonably still, stable and enquiring mind. Enlightenment is seen as some kind of superhuman feat, but actually anyone can dip into the ‘enlightened state’ -- on rare occasions quite spontaneously, but most the time with a little bit of practise first, to clear obstructions and what is known in Vedanta as a ‘sattvic’ state (which means clear, lucid, balanced and harmonious, mentally, emotionally and physically).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">This might seem rather abstract until you’ve experienced it for yourself, and it seems to me that I maybe ought to try and convey the practical aspects of it at some point, offering some clear pointers that can help you tap into this for yourself. If you’ve already experienced what I’m talking about, then you’ll no doubt be on the same wavelength. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">What I’m talking about is the baseline awareness that exists beneath all thought, all emotions, all feelings, perceptions and memories. It’s a stateless-state, ever-present and unchanging, and although it’s something most people are rarely conscious of, they wouldn’t be conscious at all without it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It’s always there, beneath the apparent obstructions of the mind, and it’s the very same awareness and sense of being that we’ve had throughout our lives. Although our bodies, minds, beliefs, circumstances and self-concepts radically change over time, the baseline awareness and sense of being remains ever the same. And the funny thing is, it’s not personal in any way -- it’s the very same sense of self -- of existing; of being an “I” -- that every single man, woman, child and animal possesses.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I tend to just call it awareness; not awareness of ‘this’ or ‘that’, but just pure awareness -- consciousness at rest. Other names for it are the Self or the no-Self (I love the delicious paradox of it all -- both point to the very same ‘thing’!), Being, or the sense of ‘I am’.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Basically, it’s a return to our original nature that we’re all really seeking, although virtually no one realises this, because most are still too busy trying to seek fulfilment and happiness in maya, the outward world of illusion (which is really just an experience in our consciousness, like everything else). </span></span>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">By reversing the focus of our attention from outside to inside, and consciously seeking this inward source, we finally find the joy, aliveness and fulfilment we were desperately searching for in all the wrong places. Consciousness resting in its source is often experienced as a tremendous bliss. What you’re really seeking is inside of you, and it’s more amazing than anything you could ever possibly experience ‘out there’.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The paradox that I inadvertently walked into with my last essay was this: when you are in touch with this baseline awareness, this innate sense of Self or being, you realise that it doesn’t really <i>want</i> anything. It’s characterised by an immense sense of allowing. It is unconditional love in the truest sense. It’s as though it pervades everything, without judgement and without any desires or preferences. It IS everything. </span></span>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Consciousness at rest has no need to accomplish or achieve anything, no need to judge or separate. When you tap into this state, when you allow yourself to just ‘drop into’ it, you probably won’t feel it wants you to do anything except relax into it, and just BE. You’ll know that everything is fine, that the phenomenal world runs itself according to natural laws and the innate programming of all creatures. Life just happens. Creation doesn’t strain, it just occurs freely and spontaneously. There’s so much we can learn from that.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Our desires, likes, dislikes and preferences, and all our goals and ambitions arise from consciousness-in-motion, with the mind and body. Mind and body have no innate ‘life’ of their own, but are illuminated and animated by the reflected light of the baseline awareness, in much the same way as the moon is illuminated by the reflected light of the sun. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">So, although the baseline awareness has no desires or ambitions of its own, its light is expressed by and embodied through the mind and ‘subtle body’ (our psyche, or active, aware consciousness as we know it; the mind and all its content). The way consciousness expresses itself through each of us is unique. If something feels good to us, if it ‘clicks’ with us, and brings a feeling of expansion and aliveness, then that’s a sure sign we’re in touch with the Self as it expresses its reflected light through the mind and psyche. Feeling good -- and I mean <i>really</i> good, not just superficially good -- is a sign that we’re connected and in tune with our essential nature. If we were to simply follow those good feelings and allow them to guide us through life, we’d pretty much have it sorted; we’d be in constant alignment with Self.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Basically what I wanted to highlight was the paradox of the Self and action. The baseline awareness, our essential Self wants and needs nothing: it doesn’t judge, compare or compete, because it’s already absolutely whole and complete. It’s entirely non-dual; permanent, ever-abiding non-dual awareness. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Yet, once we get in touch with this fundamental, primordial aspect of our nature, we may feel compelled to do certain things, to take certain actions that are in alignment with our unique nature as it expresses itself through mind and body. Actions thus taken -- actions that arise spontaneously from this deeper place of stillness and wholeness -- will always yield better results than those taken from the limited, grasping and constricted surface-level of mind. The latter will feel good and will usually have far greater results, while the former will feel desperate, anxious and will invariably create unforeseen problems.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I don’t expect you to just take my word for this. I invite you to try it for yourself. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I’m still working with this; attempting to re-wire my mind in order to stay in constant alignment with the baseline awareness, rather than being driven solely by the tides of the surface-level mind. It doesn’t happen overnight, yet to say the effort is worth it is an understatement of incredible proportions. For this is, I have to say, the difference between a life of suffering and a life of genuine happiness. I do not make that claim lightly. If you feel so called, why not investigate for yourself?</span></span></div>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-50316233626565331552012-05-01T13:15:00.001+01:002012-05-01T13:25:41.980+01:00Living without rules part 3: Living from the heart<div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Helvetica; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;">
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i><b>-- Nisargadatta</b></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The noise you just heard was the sound of Nisargadatta Maharaj hitting a very large nail on the head!</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">In some ways there's little need for me to say any more, for that basically sums up everything I’ve been endeavouring to convey in this ‘Living Without Rules’ topic. But I’ve been wrestling with this beast for several weeks and I'm determined not to give up until I've found a way to wrap it all up. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I’ve known all along exactly what I wanted to say, but the truth is I'm still much learning to <i>live</i> and embody this in my own life. I'm still exploring, experimenting and learning as I go. But I often find the best way to get really clear on a given topic is to write about it, so that's part of the reason I'm sitting here tapping away at the keys.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I've already argued that we enter this world in a state of perfection and that, as we grow up, we seemingly 'lose' that perfection. Well, it’s not so much <i>lost</i> as it is obscured by the arising ego, in much the same way as a shadow obscures the sun during an eclipse. A ‘social self’ is assembled, comprising a mask -- or set of masks -- that we wear to please others and to meet the demands of various situations. Although it has its function, it’s so overdeveloped in most people that disconnects us from our innate nature as pure, unconditioned consciousness or awareness. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It's because of this there's a deep, fundamental conflict at the core of our being: social self versus innate self; or what we choose to be in daily life versus what we truly are and what on a deep level we yearn to be. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The social self is a largely unconscious mechanism. It’s built upon following external rules and hinges upon our deep-seated need to be perceived in a favourable light by others.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The problem is, this mode of functioning is what causes virtually all of our suffering. We end up living deeply inauthentic lives and we suffer greatly for it. We become deadened, lifeless, stifled and robotic. We end up passionless, joyless, depressed, resentful, anxious and perpetually dissatisfied with life. That's clearly <i>no</i> way to live and yet it's the way countless human beings do live. It's really little wonder the world is in such a mess.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>A BETTER WAY</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Surely a far better way to live is to step out of the prison of the social self, which has kept us fragmented and frustrated for the best part of our lives. We can then retrace the original state of authenticity, unicity, spontaneity and joy that we experienced as a young child. It can be done -- and, if we want to experience true and lasting satisfaction and fulfilment in life, it simply must be done! </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It's the difference between living by the outdated, inflexible and often insane rules imposed on us by outside sources and instead living from the<i> heart;</i> being directed by what brings us joy and a sense of aliveness, satisfaction and a true feeling of 'rightness'.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Instead of living by external rules, we live by an inner compass that will always steer us in the right direction, followings the laws not of society, but as Nisargadatta put it, of our inner self. These laws are adaptive, flexible, fresh and dynamic and rather than turning us into depressed, frustrated zombies, they elicit within us a sense of aliveness, passion, joy and zest for life. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">There's no greater joy than being in touch with what we truly are and living a life of authenticity. It's as rare and precious as a pearl, but it's a pearl we're each capable of creating, with just a little awareness, reorientation and, to begin with at least, a measure of consistent, conscious effort.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">If you're still reading this, it's perhaps because you've already suffered enough in life. You've tried it the old way, you've been a good little social self and done exactly as you were 'meant to' most your life, and all you've gotten from it is dissatisfaction and suffering. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I think the majority of people are like that, although most spend all their spare time trying to numb themselves out with the Weapons of Mass Distraction: which include drugs, alcohol, food, obsessive focus on sex, sport, TV reality shows, compulsive internet browsing -- the list goes on. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">This simply creates a whole new set of problems and until we are able to let go of these compulsive distractions, there’s simply no way they can address the underlying cause of their unease and dissatisfaction. As a society we're masters at dealing with problems by simply masking the symptoms. But in the long run, this just exacerbates our problems.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>PREREQUISITES</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">So how do we live an authentic, inspired life? How do we live from our innate self as opposed to the constricting overlay of the ego and social self, the mechanism that over the course of our adult lives has choked just about every ounce of joy and aliveness out of us? </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">First of all, you have to be ready. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">You need to be at a point where you have sufficient self-awareness to dispassionately gauge where you're at in your life, how you got there, what's truly motivating you and what fears and doubts have kept you from going within and following your heart rather than being directed by externals. You need to see the limitations of following external rules and how this can cut you off from your own wisdom and inspiration, disconnecting you and stifling your spirit. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">You have to be willing to look at your pain and suffering, your frustration and perpetual lack of fulfilment, and clearly see how this derives from leading an inauthentic life. This is because your innate sense of wellbeing and joy has been obscured by the sycophantic, calculating social self as it tries to conform to external dictates. Until you’re very clear on this, you’re not going to have sufficient motivation to adopt a radical new approach to living.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">When you’ve seen how a life directed entirely by the social self and external rules and expectations has led to nothing but misery, you can then start to experiment with something altogether different. You can live by the laws of your real self, as Nisargadatta put it. Instead of living by the head (social self), you start to live by the heart (innate self).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>BEWARE THE VASANAS</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It’s easy for misunderstandings to arise here. Some people will immediately take exception to this: <i>“Are you really suggesting we should just do what we want all the time?” “That’s all very well, but it’s hardly practical!” “Wouldn’t we just end up like lazy, spoilt, self-centred brats?” “Our mind is the source of our intelligence, if we followed our hearts we’d get nowhere.” “Sentimental nonsense!”</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Following our heart, living by our innate wellbeing and joy is <i>not</i> the same as being driven simply by our surface-level whims, desires and habits. In Vedanta these are known as <i>vasanas</i> -- habitual mental tendencies, or grooves in consciousness, and they form the basis of our likes and dislikes, habits and rudimentary personality structure. If you were to simply follow your vasanas unquestioningly you probably WOULD end up lazy, spoilt, fat and useless. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Following your vasanas and being directed only by the superficial surface level of your mind is NOT living from your heart or from your innate being. It’s simply another trap, much like being stuck in the prison of the social self, only this time you’re stuck in the prison of the lazy habits of your own untamed mind. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">You have to be aware of these vasanas, which tend to unconsciously drive your behaviour and motivations and into which you so easily ‘lose yourself’. Negative vasanas and personality traits need to be surmounted, otherwise you may find yourself spending all day everyday sitting in your underwear eating junk food and playing computer games or watching trashy TV. That’s not living from your heart, although you might think it is; it’s just what your mind/vasanas/personality may be accustomed to and comfortable doing. It may bring a kind of numbed comfortableness, but it’s highly unlikely to bring the joy, excitement and aliveness that’s characteristic of being aligned with your essential self (what? You don’t believe that it really feels that good? Then you really have to try it!).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Vasanas can be healthy or unhealthy (for example, your vasanas are largely responsible for the kind of food you eat and the lifestyle you lead) and the unhealthy ones need to be recognised and consciously rewritten or weeded out. This frees up the space, time and energy necessary for you to access and follow the deeper impulses of your heart; to do what you <i>truly</i> want to do, what brings you joy and what you really are <i>here</i> to do. This is a topic in itself, but I thought I’d briefly touch upon it here as it has relevance.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>TUNING IN</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Once you’ve recognised the need of shifting your compass from outside to inside, from social self to innate self and have begun to surmount superficial thought habits and vasanas, what you have to next to do is tune into your innate self. Before you can live from it, you first must find a way to access it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">This is where meditation is extremely useful. It is an excellent tool for redirecting your attention from constant focus on external and internal objects (the latter being thoughts, beliefs, emotions, memories, and all such content of consciousness) and bringing your focus to the Self, to the source of your own consciousness. Here you will experience a great sense of stillness, peace, spaciousness and aliveness. You’ll begin to experience a state of presence: consciousness without thought. Some people call this the ‘zen mind’.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">In this expanse of wordless awareness lies an intelligence far greater, deeper and more primordial than the superficial mind and its continual inner monologue and regurgitation of past memories, thoughts, concepts, beliefs and future projections. It’s a state of natural wellbeing, of wholeness, lightness and ease. If the mind is especially still, you may even experience it as a feeling of great joy and bliss.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The majority of people aren’t readily familiar with the state I’m describing (I’m calling it a ‘state’ but that’s actually not entirely true, for it’s beyond all states, which are by their nature always fluctuating. It's more like the ever-present baseline of our experience: a vast, unchanging sky of ever-present awareness in which all is experienced). Although not everyone experiences this on a regular basis, just about everyone has had a taste of it at some time or another. Perhaps at the sight of intense natural beauty the mind was suspended and, if only for a fleeting moment, there was nothing but pure awareness and along with it a sense of peace, stillness, expansiveness and joy. That’s what I’m talking about.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It can be accessed by meditation, or for some people by being alone in nature, by deep concentration, dancing, chanting, painting, yoga or performing a martial art. It’s helpful to find a means that works for you; something that diverts all the mind’s energy and opens up this space of pure being.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">We can train ourselves to dip into it at will, simply by learning to ‘drop’ our mind and body and resting in this baseline of pure awareness. For most people, the mind is so active and the vasanas consume so much energy that it’s very difficult to do this, even for a few seconds. The mind has tremendous power and momentum, but the effort put into training the mind and learning to tame it, still it and reach beyond it will in time yield remarkable benefits. It's an effortless effort, by the way, rather than a rigorous discipline. Sometimes it's enough to simply, completely and totally LET GO -- of everything!</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>SELF-DIRECTED ACTION</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It’s from this state of awareness that we come to experience our innate wellbeing and our inner wisdom. It’s here that our joy and happiness resides, never in external things, people or events (although it might seem that way, but that's another discussion entirely). It’s from this place of wordless spaciousness that we can make our decisions and ‘feel’ our way into right action. The right answers just spontaneously arise if we allow them to, and if it really is from this baseline of innate being, then they are always far better than anything the surface-level mind could have cooked up. You’ll simply have to take my word for it and experiment for yourself.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">To access this inner wisdom, well-directed questions can help. In any moment it’s a good practise to be quite clear on what you want. Not what your mind or vasanas want, but what you, at a deep and fundamental level, really, <i>really</i> want! What do you feel compelled to do? What feels right? You don’t have to think about this or strain to come up with an answer, you simply allow the answer to arise as a spontaneous impulse of ‘rightness’. This is what gets called ‘inspiration’. It’s the source of all genuine creativity, insights, epiphanies and breakthroughs of any kind.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">If you have a sense of ease, lightness and quiet excitement, then that’s a sure sign you’ve tapped into the wisdom of your innate self. If there’s any sense of unease, heaviness or tension around the answer, then it’s probable the mind and social self have co-opted the process.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Try putting this into practise. Do it for at least a week. Take some time out -- an hour or so, or perhaps even a whole day if you can. Relax into that place of stillness, ease and lightness that's beneath the surface of your mind, thoughts and intellect. Do whatever you need to access that innate wellbeing -- it’s <i>always</i> there, even if it's obscured much of the time by the denseness of your thoughts and emotions. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Once you feel connected with that, try tuning into whatever spontaneous impulses you feel.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">What do you want to do? </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Don’t just live by your existing habits and routines -- open yourself to what you’d really, REALLY like to do, to what you feel would be fun and joyful. Then do it! Do whatever comes to mind, no matter how random or unusual. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Let these spontaneously arising impulses direct your actions. Look upon it as an experiment. I’m willing to bet you’ll end up feeling infinitely more refreshed, light, joyful, fresh, alive than you ever were when you were living by the rules and habits of your mind and other people.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I suggest starting with little things, minor actions you can take. Then, when you’re comfortable allowing yourself to be directed by this flow of inspiration, move onto the bigger things, and allow it to guide you when it comes to the larger aspects of your life, such as job, relationships, home environment, and so on. But do learn to walk before you try to run.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Again, people might argue that simply following their impulses is what leads killers to murder people and pedophiles to abuse children. Those are NOT and could never be the impulses of the innate self. Those are surface-level vasanas and mental aberrations. They don’t feel good; they are driven by immense pain and they cause immense pain. Dysfunctional behaviour is a clear sign that a person is massively out of alignment with their innate self. No one was born to kill or abuse others; to do so is a distortion of our true nature caused by a deeply damaged psychology.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>DHARMA AND PAIN</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The concept of <i>dharma</i> is helpful for ensuring our desires and impulses are in fact guided by the Self and not simply by our superficial likes, dislikes and whims. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Dharma is something that is built into us; an instinctual knowledge of what is right and wrong. Nisargadatta was once asked to made a differentiation between ‘good’ and ‘evil’. His answer was that that which brings peace and has a positive affect on self and others is good, and that which brings unnecessary suffering is evil. If you need any rules at all for gauging your action and determining whether they are derived from the innate self or the lower levels of the mind, this is about the only one you’ll ever require. Whatever you’re planning to do, keep in mind that actions arising from the heart will only ever be motivated by peace, harmony and an integral regard for the whole.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Our dharma is not driven by self-interest and self-gratification, but by a deeper sense of harmony with all life. When aligned with the innate self, we find compassion arises spontaneously and we intuitively act in service of others and the totality. We don’t act irresponsibility, but with a clear understanding of the nature of cause and effect. Sometimes we need to question our motivation for doing certain things to ensure it’s based upon our dharma or if the mind, ego or vasanas have taken over the show. If the latter is the case, suffering will always result. We’ll lose the sense of lightness, ease and peace we experience when rooted in the Self and we’ll instead begin to feel tense, desperate, grasping and constricted.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Pain is a signal that lets us know we’re off track somehow. If we’re experiencing psychological pain of any sort, it’s because the mind has obstructed our connection to our innate wellbeing. This is usually a sign that we have to slow down, take some time to rebalance and again dip into the ease and lightness of our innate self. From here we can see what action we are compelled to take. This action will always <i>feel good</i> -- although it often might nudge us out of our comfort zone, so we may sometimes feel a little nervous or uncertain at the same time.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">When determining the correct choice to make it’s helpful to notice the signals our body is giving us. <i>‘Right action’</i> is usually experienced in the body as a sense of expansiveness, a warm glow, a feeling of opening up or a kind of ‘inner click’. <i>‘Wrong action’</i> usually creates a tightness and constricting feeling, a subtle sense of unease or tension in the body. Many of us are so disconnected from our bodies that it might take some time and practise to be able to tune into these sensations and to sense what the body is trying to tell us. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Again, our dharma -- our sense of right action -- is already built into us at a core level. The signals will be there to guide us, and the body is one of the greatest means of reading these signals. When we live our lives directed by our heart (aka our essential nature and innate self), we feel good! When we go against our own nature, we feel bad. It’s as simple as that. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>ENDING THE WAR WITHIN</b></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I believe the real reason so many of us are depressed and unhappy is that we’ve become disconnected from who we really are and what we truly want. We’re living inauthentic lives and we’re suffering greatly for it. There’s a kind of civil war raging within most people on a largely</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> unconscious level, the battle between the mind/ego/social self and the expansive, free-flowing, adaptive and limitless intelligence of our innate Self.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It’s essential that we end this battle now, for our own sakes and for the sake of the planet we’re systematically destroying.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">People that are happy, at peace and able to freely express their true nature are generally highly functional people. They tend to be compassionate, caring, creative and usually a lot of fun to be around. They have a natural regard for themselves, others and the whole -- and, by heck, it’s contagious! On the other hand, people that are deeply disconnected from their true nature are often very dysfunctional and create an enormous amount of needless suffering for themselves and others. If we as a species are to survive and thrive, we need to learn to be embody the characteristics of the former and not the latter. We need to be authentic and to live, embody and express our true integrity, creativity and aliveness. The choice is really up to us. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">If the old external rules are no longer working for us -- and on both individual and collective levels, I’d say it’s clear that they aren’t -- then we need to make a new and radical shift in the way we’re living. We need to start following our <i>own</i> rules, the rules of the heart.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I will conclude with one of my favourite passages from the Tao Te Ching, for it succinctly sums up everything I’ve been endeavouring to say:</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>“When the greatness of the Tao is present,</i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>right action arises from one’s own heart.</i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>When the greatness of the Tao is absent,</i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>action comes from the rules</i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>of “kindness and justice”.</i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>If you need rules to be kind and just,</i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>this is a sure sign that virtue is absent.”</i></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">(There appears to be some really annoying formatting glitches with Blogger these days, the text either appears too big or too small! Sorry, this is the best I can do!)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-33706708774625064962012-03-17T14:36:00.000+00:002012-05-01T13:24:03.480+01:00Living without rules part 2: The innate self, the social self and the root of human suffering<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">As I concluded last time, we come into this world in a state of wholeness. In fact, it could be said that we come from a state of wholeness, from the totality that is everything -- the limitless potentiality of the unmanifest. The moment the formless takes form, the limitless becomes limited as an apparent singularity, an object existing in time and space. (Bear with me!)
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">For the first several months of life, the new human being remains in a state of undifferentiation. The ego has yet to develop, and with it the sense of duality that arises from seeing oneself as an apparently separate and autonomous entity that’s quite apart from the environment around it as well as other people. As I said in my last entry, young infants exist in a state of oneness with the world around them. There are still objects perceived, but the notion of being separate from them has yet to arise in the developing consciousness.
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A KNOT IN CONSCIOUSNESS</span></b></div>
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When the sense of “I”, “me” and “mine” arises -- and along with it the notion of “you” and “the world” as being something quite separate and alien -- the developing individual contracts into a ‘self’ and adopts a newly compartmentalised perception of reality. The sense of being a separate ‘self’, an individual entity that’s distinct from everything else (‘ego’), brings with it the need to protect, sustain and solidify this sense of individuality. That’s an important point because it’s this need to solidify the ego that underlies and motivates the behaviour of just about every human being on the planet.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">This process is clearly part of the collective mental development of humankind, at least the stage of evolution we’re at. I already used the analogy of our sense of ‘self’ being like a knot in consciousness. The knot has no independent existence of its own, for it is just the rope folded in on itself. But it has an <i>apparent</i> existence and appears separate from the rest of the rope. This knot forms the basis of our sense of self. Like gravity, it draws objects toward itself, and as the layers build, our sense of self becomes ever more solidified and complex.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The objects that attach to the knot and form our psyche comprise various layers of conditioning, beliefs, opinions, likes and dislikes, habits and ways of relating to oneself, others and the world. Our gender, nationality, religion, social class become part of our identity and who we assume ourselves to be. These layers of mental content form the basis of our ego, of our self-image and sense of who we are.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Virtually all of this is programmed into us as children. With this realisation, we can see that there’s actually not a lot that’s ‘personal’ about it. Most of the material that makes up the ‘person’ we believe ourselves to be, is in fact second-hand and impersonal. The content is highly interchangeable, and is in fact changing all the time. It’s not solid and it’s certainly not ‘who we are’ in essence, yet we heavily identify with it. The original limitlessness and openness we experienced prior to the emergence of ego becomes contracted into a limited cluster of thoughts, beliefs and conditioning.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">This conglomeration forms the basis of human identity and is what motivates just about every action and reaction throughout the course of an individual’s life. I often used to wonder what it is that motivates people’s behaviour, what it is that makes us do the things we do and what it is we’re ultimately trying to achieve. I came to the conclusion that one of our core motivations is the unconscious need to uphold and bolster our sense of self and identity. In other words, it’s all about ego maintenance.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Any perceived threat to -- or diminishment of -- our ego is almost tantamount to death, or oblivion. This primal fear of somehow losing what we take to be our ‘self’, is what’s unconsciously running the show. That, and the desire to maintain and expand our sense of self in order to feel better about ourselves and to make others perceive us the way we want to be perceived. People are willing to fight and die to uphold this image they have of themselves, and they frequently do.
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">THE INNATE SELF</span></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The funny thing is, it’s not really who we are! We just think it is.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Our natural state, prior to assuming the mantle of an ego and all the mental content that comprises it, is boundless, open, unlimited and undefined. I believe this is our natural state because what’s natural feels GOOD. Our bodies and minds are designed to let us know what’s good or bad for us. Ease and peace are signals we’re in balance, while pain of any kind is a symptom that something is wrong, that we’ve slipped out of our natural wellbeing and must take action to resolve it. In a sense we were born to feel good! Feeling bad is a signal that something needs attention.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">When we’re aligned with the ease, lightness, spontaneity and freedom of our innate self, expressing our deepest desires and loves without fear or restriction, we feel expansive, joyful and alive. Why wouldn’t we? Our innate self is completely natural, authentic and uncontrived. It’s simply pure and unconditioned consciousness/awareness, expressing itself through our bodies and minds. When we’re very young it effortlessly expresses itself, freely and without censure.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The developing ego, however, becomes like a lampshade that obscures the light of our innate or authentic self. A sense of contraction begins. We’re motivated by fear to behave in certain ways that might have originally been quite alien to us. We begin to believe that what we essentially are isn’t good enough somehow, and that we have to do, act or be ‘better’ in order to gain the favour of others. If there truly was a ‘fall’ of mankind, this is it, and it happens to each of us as a matter of course.
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">THE SOCIAL SELF</span></b></div>
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A very large component of the ego is what might be termed the ‘social self’, which ties in with what Freud termed the ‘superego’. The social self developed in response to the people and the world around you. From a very young age we learn that it’s necessary to have other people think favourably of us. We depend on this for our very survival. If we behave in certain ways, other people can be predicted to respond in ways that are conducive to our wellbeing. If we behave well as children, we are rewarded and if we misbehave, we are punished. (Of course, in some children where there’s been a breakdown in natural development and nurturing, behaving badly may be adopted as a means to get attention, but that’s another story.)
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It’s here that the social self is born; a mechanism by which we seek to manipulate the environment around us by curtailing the impulses of our innate self in order to get the most favourable response from others. In a sense, we learn to become false. We do so to meet the perceived wants and demands of the people around us. Once the ego and social self develop, they take up residence in our psyche and, unchecked, will continue to hold the reins for pretty much the rest of our lives. The social self is about following rules and structures, doing what’s expected and behaving in ways that will get us maximum benefit and desired outcomes. It’s calculating, imitative and results-oriented.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I remember back in my Social Science days learning about sociologist Erving Goffman and his famed book ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life’. Goffman basically asserted that all our behaviour is like that of actors on a stage. We’re all playing roles, presenting ourselves to the world in ways that we believe will bring us the results we want as well as maintaining the image of ourselves that we want others to have of us. This is the social self through and through.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A large part of what drives the social self is the fear of rejection. I believe the fear of rejection and stigmatisation is part of our genetic makeup. There’s something almost primal about it. Back when we lived among tribes, it was essential that we fit in with the tribe, for to be ostracised and cast out would be to invite almost certain death. So it’s possible that our great need to fit in with the ‘tribe’, to meet expectations and elicit approval is actually a survival instinct. Little wonder it drives so much of human behaviour and forms the core of the social self. The social self is essentially an approval-generating mechanism.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It certainly has its use. It enables us to function in the world. It provides useful guidelines for us as to what is ‘acceptable’ behaviour in the world. The untamed innate self requires boundaries, if only for practicality. If we’re to live in society, we must, to a certain extent, adhere to the norms of society. It’d be too easy to get into trouble otherwise. You might have an impulse to run through a shopping centre stark naked, but unless you’re happy to spend the rest of your day in a police cell, it’s probably best that the social self overrules that particular impulse.
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">THE PROBLEM</span></b></div>
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Yet we’ve lost all balance. The social self has become a gargantuan dictator that has suppressed all opposition until pretty much nothing else exists. Any component of body or consciousness that overdevelops like this becomes like a cancer, threatening the health, wellbeing and even the survival of the organism.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The social self has all-but suffocated the innate self and there’s a conflict at the very core of our being. No matter what we achieve in life and what we become, as long as that conflict is simmering within us, we’re not going to be happy or at peace. In fact we’re going to be miserable, depressed, frustrated, unfulfilled and lost. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">There will be a continual YEARNING eating away at us, an insatiable craving for...something, but we don’t know what. This state of being is what the Buddha called ‘samsara’ and it’s characterised by a deep and profound discontent and dissatisfaction at the core of our being. This is the root of pretty much all our suffering.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It’s the result of a case of mistaken identity. We think we are our egos and social selves, which are but overdeveloped mechanisms in consciousness. Most people are so identified with them and with the roles they’re playing and the image they have of themselves, that they’re aware of nothing beyond it.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">That’s the problem of the human condition. We think we are what we think we are -- but we’re not! It’s not real.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">We’ve become so disconnected from our true nature, that it’s almost as though a part of us has died inside. Our self esteem and self image have either artificially inflated or plummeted because, at a very deep level, we feel inauthentic and inadequate. And actually that’s true, because we’re totally identified with a mechanism in consciousness that has nothing to do with who or what we truly are. If you don’t feel good enough, it’s because the ‘you’ you’re identifying with isn’t YOU at all.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Life then becomes a drudge and misery, bereft of all spark and joy, and we can never quite fathom why. Buying into the mass hypnosis of our consumer-driven culture, we assume it’s because we don’t have enough ‘stuff’ yet, or because we haven’t achieved enough success or recognition in the eyes of the world. So we keep chasing after objects and attainments, even though they’ve never quite us the lasting peace and wholeness we so desperately crave. Because most people’s attention is almost entirely fixated outwardly, we’re seeking this elusive ‘x factor’ outside of ourselves in objects, situations, experiences or other people.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">But the problem isn’t that we haven’t measured up to our culture’s ideal of materialistic success. The fundamental problem is we’ve sold our souls to fit in with what the world thinks we ought to be. A society full of nothing but social selves is inauthentic, superficial, joyless and fundamentally dysfunctional. This distorted view of oneself and life is evident on both a personal and collective level, for it permeates the institutions and structures of society.
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">THE SOLUTION</span></b></div>
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What we’re really looking for our SELF and we’re looking in all the wrong places. What we truly want is to reclaim the joy, freshness, aliveness and expansiveness we knew as children before our authentic nature was cemented over by the constructs of ego and social self. And it’s wholly possible to do that. The innate self is never extinguished. What is real can’t be destroyed, for it is the essence of what we are. It is pure, unrefined, unconditioned consciousness or awareness. Without it, we’d cease to be. As in sleep, no consciousness equals no world and no self.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Recovering and reclaiming this core essence is a process of excavation. To get to what is true, you have to dig through the layers of sediment that have built up around this knot in our consciousness, the phantom self of the ego. The social self can still operate and advise, for it has a necessary function enabling us to live harmoniously with other human beings. But it is no longer the driving force behind our lives. We no longer take it, or the ego as being ‘who’ we are, for they clearly aren’t.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The source of our suffering always seems to come down to mistaken identity. It’s therefore essential that we know what we are, or at least what we are not.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Ego arises within us, and a social self is built up based upon the expectations and ‘norms’ of the culture we live in. But they are not us. How could they be? We existed prior to either and we exist beyond either. Both arise only as clusters of thought crystallised into beliefs, habitual reactions and behaviour. Stop thinking, if only for a few seconds, and they cease to be. But something else exists in the stillness. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Something prior to and beyond the content of our consciousness -- the pure, simple, direct awareness that we experience when everything else is stripped away. The one constant throughout our entire life, is simply our awareness. All else changes -- our body, thoughts, beliefs, self-image and identity, our circumstances and environment and the roles we assume -- but awareness always remains present, unaffected and unchanged.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">This awareness, the base-light of our existence, is our true nature and it expresses through our body and mind as our innate self. We experience it as openness, expansiveness, spontaneity, peace, inspiration and often as a very deep joy, even bliss.
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">THE GREATEST DECEPTION IN THE HISTORY OF HUMANKIND</span></b></div>
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Tragically, we’ve been taught to mistrust our innate nature and see our natural impulses and as something dangerous and harmful. Whether consciously or unconsciously, most people have internalised the assertion of poisonous religious doctrines that assert our essential nature is somehow rotten, deficient and lowly, that we’re all ‘born sinners’. We’re led to believe that if we followed our innermost nature and allowed our actions to be directed by our innate self we’d all be lying, thieving, murderous monsters. We’re taught by society that we need rules, regulations, laws and doctrines in order to curb our innate wickedness.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">But this is simply a form of psychological warfare that’s been perpetrated upon the masses for millennia in order to control us. It’s not true and it’s actually very harmful. First of all, it’s an inescapable conclusion that so many of the rules and doctrines imposed on us are archaic, inflexible, outdated and no longer serve us as a society. And secondly, because as I have said, a society consisting of nothing more than deadened social selves is inherently dysfunctional. The living become the living dead and society becomes rife with violence, ignorance, hatred and mass depression. This all stems from the conflict at the core of our being; the conflict between the innate self and the social self which has subjugated and smothered it. The external is always but a reflection of the internal. Inner conflict will inevitably be reflected in outer conflict. The only way forward is to resolve that core conflict once and for all.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I’m not talking about destroying or vanquishing the ego, superego or social self. That’s not the answer and would in fact be very harmful. Violence does not beget peace. The answer, as with all things in life, is balance. Currently we’re out of balance and we desperately need to regain our equilibrium.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Because of our conditioned distrust of our innate nature, many might fear that if we follow our innermost impulses and promptings we’d end up being lazy, selfish and hedonistic blobs. I do not believe this is true. That’s far more likely to be the case when we’re disconnected from our selves. In fact, the innate self, as a reflection of the Absolute consciousness/awareness, is characterised by joy, aliveness, compassion and inspiration. It has a natural regard for others and the whole for it does not see itself as in any way separate.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">We’re not truly alive until we learn to embody that most essential element of our nature. What’s more, we’ll never find lasting peace and happiness until we learn to resolve the conflict within us and learn to balance all aspects of our nature. The time for change is now...</span>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-11285259766822181102012-02-24T19:08:00.001+00:002012-05-01T13:25:22.815+01:00Living without rules part 1: Are we innately good or bad?<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's generally accepted that society and human beings must function via a framework of rules, regulations, laws and imperatives.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">This is based on the implicit assumption that human nature is essentially bad, and that without rules to guide us, we'd all be thieving, murderous monsters. We're led to believe that we need rules to restrain our dark base impulses, or else society will spiral out of control and we'd basically annihilate ourselves. (It must be noted at this point, that even with our framework of rules we're already doing a pretty good job of doing that!)</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>THE CONCEPT OF ORIGINAL SIN</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I believe the assumption that human nature is essentially bad stems from religious doctrines such as the Christian notion of "original sin". This is at the cornerstone of Christian doctrine and is the foundational tool in manipulating its adherents into compliance. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Think about it, if they taught us we are all essentially good then we'd all be happy and we'd have no reason to adhere to the rigorous demands the church tries to impose on us. I perhaps shouldn't place the entire burden of blame on Christianity, because there's certainly enough to go around the other Abrahamic religions, but Christianity is the one I'm most familiar with, which is why I'm making particular reference to it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I have a problem with any doctrine that tells us we're innately bad, that we're somehow rotten at our core. It's basically a lie and one that's been used for millennia to manipulate and coerce the masses. It's the most heinous lie in the whole of human history and it's responsible for untold suffering. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Now, it's hard to deny that humanity as a whole is exceptionally messed up, and that's to put it politely. You only need to watch five minutes of the news to see how deeply dysfunctional, corrupt, disturbed and insane individuals, organisations, governments and nations can be, and what an unspeakable mess we've made on planet earth.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Does this mean we're intrinsically bad?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I contend that this would be a lazy and short-sighted conclusion to make. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>THE PRE-EGO STATE</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">If you disagree with me, try spending some time with babies and very young children (or animals for that matter, but I'll stick with children for the sake of this topic). Any time I do, I come to the conclusion that we all enter this world in a state of sheer perfection. Very young children exist in a state of total oneness with life -- they're open, inquisitive, non-judgemental and everything is fresh to them. They're the epitome of LIFE.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Certainly, they can be cranky, loudly (!) expressive and they have a tendency to poop themselves, but in that state prior to the formation of ego and the framework of psyche, they're totally at one with themselves, in much the same way that animals are. They're authentic, totally in the moment and, best of all, totally free of the layers of mind-driven suffering most adults get themselves lost in. Most people are never more authentically themselves, never more in touch with life and never more 'perfect', than when they're young infants.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">If we were inherently imperfect as religions claim, then as young children we'd be entities of evil; murderous, psychotic and dangerous, until the moment we learn to understand, adopt and be 'saved by' society's rules. Instead, I contend, it's actually the reverse. As babies and young children we're in touch with our essential nature and our innate goodness, wonder, curiosity and joy. (There might be one or two rare exceptions, but these are largely due to breakdowns in proper nurturing, when the child's needs have not been adequately met).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>THE ARISING OF EGO</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The moment we begin to master language and develop an ego and mind-based identity (basing our notion of 'self' on the name we're given and identifying with the limitations of our physical form and the content of our consciousness), that's when the problems begin. We learn to compartmentalise our experience of life into chunks, into 'good' and 'bad', 'me', 'mine', and 'others'.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">When the ego develops, children go from a state of wonder and openness, to wanting to protect and reinforce the newly-formed sense of ego. It goes from being about simply "toys", to "MY toys, not YOUR toys!" This is a normal part of human development, and I'm not saying it's bad, it's just the way it is at our current level of psychological evolution and development as a species.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Now, virtually everyone will be forevermore mired in this sense of ego. Driven by a never-ending succession of desire and fear, they'll be motivated by the need to protect their 'identity' and sense of 'me-ness' above all else. A few very rare individuals may eventually transcend the ego framework and rediscover the original state of wholeness experienced prior to this mis-identification with form. This is essentially what 'enlightenment' is and it's uncommon. The best most people can hope for is reaching a state of inner balance and not completely allowing the conceptual framework to imprison consciousness and drive every action and reaction.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The mind-driven sense of identity that naturally arises in children and co-opts consciousness is a given. As I said, it's not wrong and it's not bad, it just is. It is, however, the source of pretty much all our suffering. Virtually all of our behaviour and motivation is driven by the fundamental need to uphold and maintain this conceptual sense of self: the image we hold in our minds of who we think we are.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Any threat to this mental self is seen as a threat to our very existence because we mistakenly assume it's the totality of what we are. That's why people are willing to fight and die for their beliefs. This ego/pseudo-self is like a magnet, drawing various content to itself, gradually building it up until it becomes bigger and more seemingly substantial. Layers and layers build up around it; layers composed of thoughts and beliefs, conditioning, habits, opinions, likes and dislikes, desires and fears.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It becomes this gargantuan entity that we think of as 'us'. It completely dominates our lives, although most people are quite unconscious of all this -- they just assume they are what they think they are, and that what they think, they are! It's the 'person' we think we are: the totality of 'me'.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>THE ROPE</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The funny thing is, it's not real.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It's a kind of 'ghost in the machine'. It -- this entity we think of as 'us' -- has no inherent, independent existence of its own.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">We might think of consciousness -- the original unconditioned consciousness we had as babies and pre-ego children -- as being like a rope. It doesn't matter where this rope came from, or where it begins or ends, as that's the subject of another discussion entirely. When the ego develops a knot forms in the rope. This knot becomes the entity we think of as 'ourself'. The knot is somehow magnetised and begins drawing all sorts of mental substrate toward and onto itself, forming the all-consuming, all-dominating sense of 'me'.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">But a knot has no independent existence of its own. It has an apparent existence. It seems to be something separate from the rest of the rope, but it isn't, it's just the rope folded in on itself, creating the appearance of something separate. Eventually, at the end of our lives, the rope is untied and all the mental substrate that was magnetised to it falls away. We're back to what we were: pure unconditioned consciousness, although this time it slips back into unmanifested potentiality where it rests, until the next movement of consciousness occurs.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">This is a lot to grasp for many people. It completely overturns everything we've probably always assumed to be true about ourselves and the very nature of our identity and existence. But I think it is, nevertheless logical and it can be verified by a degree of self-investigation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Consider this. People's entire sense of identity and the content of ego (the stuff magnetised to the knot in the rope) is entirely dependent on memory. If I could press a button and completely erase your memory, your entire conceptual identity would instantaneously cease. Yet you'd still be alive and aware. You'd be back to that open, undefined, expansive state we all knew as infants, when we were most in line with our essential nature prior to the influence of conditioning and conceptualisation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Of course, a new identity would soon begin to coalesce, but the fact this 'identity' (and all the content of ego and mind) is entirely interchangable, means that logically it cannot be YOU. It's all just objects in consciousness; phenomena. You are the consciousness; you are the noumenon beyond the phenomena. It's worth reflecting on this with an open mind.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>THE END OF SUFFERING</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">So what happens when we wake up from this fabricated sense of self, and see beyond the knot in consciousness that we erroneously took to be ourselves? The answer is liberation from suffering caused when other people, the world and life appear to oppose, threaten or damage one's fabricated sense of identity. This is basically the essence of the Buddha's teaching 2,500 years ago. He called it 'the end of suffering'. It's also the freedom to be, do and become whatever we want, whatever we feel drawn to do, because we've transcended previous limitations and definitions we've placed on ourselves.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It's also the only means of reaching a true and lasting inner peace in life. The world is as the world is, and other people are as they are, but we stop resisting it. Instead we accept and work with, and around it. Life flows more smoothly when we stop creating our own obstructions in the flow. We no longer see ourselves as separate from life: I mean, how could we be? There's no 'us' and 'life'. We are life. It's one totality.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>A NEW WAY OF UNDERSTANDING OUR TRUE NATURE</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Let's go back to the original question of whether or not we're intrinsically bad. How can we possibly be? It seems to me that it's actually quite the contrary, that we're intrinsically perfect. We come into this world perfect and, as we develop -- as our ego is formed and conditioning moulds our psyche -- we accumulate layer upon layer of muck, creating distortions in the way consciousness is expressed through us. These distortions are not 'us' and they're not in any way a reflection of our true nature.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">We're like candles in a glass jar. Consciousness is the light, and the jar represents our mind and psyche. If the jar is covered in dirt, then the light struggles to shine through. If the jar is clear and undistorted, the candle shines brightly through the glass. The same is true for us. Don't mistake a dirty jar as being evidence that there's no light within, or that the dirt on the jar is the totality in essence.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It's this misperception that's at the root of so many religions and philosophies. It reflects an inadequate understanding of the nature of reality, consciousness and self. It's a delusion that's caused and continues to cause untold misery and it's time it was challenged. The way we're living as a species is no longer tenable. It's based on misunderstanding and misperception and it's time that it was changed.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">This might be challenging stuff for many people, but I believe that questioning the nature of one's assumed identity is really the only way to move beyond the great miasma of human suffering. Knowledge is power and Self-Knowledge is ultimate power; the power to transcend suffering. Self knowledge and a lasting end to personal suffering is rarer than gold dust in this world of ours. Are you brave enough to be part of the vanguard?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-73774800061159792192012-02-01T19:12:00.002+00:002012-02-01T19:14:49.155+00:00The wisdom of inconsistency<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i>- Ralph Waldo Emerson</i></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I love that quote. It turns consistency on its head. Most of us think of consistency as something very positive and important, and certainly there are instances where it's necessary to maintain a consistent attitude. But here's where the contrarian in me slips out. Rather than becoming more and more consistent as I progress through life, I'm instead starting to celebrate and encourage my own inconsistency.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To maintain a "foolish consistency" is to rigidly stick to your beliefs, ideas and opinions without ever questioning them and without venturing out of your little mental cul de sac, which may be comfortable, but is nevertheless a prison. Too often consciousness gets trapped in crystallised mental formations: rigid, dogmatic beliefs, inflexible opinions, erroneous viewpoints and countless unconscious habits and patterns.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To live like this is to not live at all. We just sleep-walk our way through life, habitually, unconsciously and automatically reacting to life and other people. The masquerade of our "social self" is something contrary to what might be called our "essential self", which is what we really are: unconditioned awareness, free-flowing consciousness.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I'm wary of beliefs. I know it's almost impossible to exist in this world without forming myriad beliefs about this, that and the next thing.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But beliefs are constraining and, loathe though we may be to admit it, are largely erroneous. We tend to mistake our belief about a thing as being the thing itself. We also have a tendency to worship our own beliefs and belief systems, as they form the basis of our "self-identity". People are literally prepared to kill and be killed for their beliefs, simply because a threat to their belief system is a perceived threat to the essence of their identity (a totally fabricated, mind-created identity at that, but that's the topic of another discussion).</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Furthermore, to quote Robert Anton Wilson (I'm an all-round quoting monkey, I know):</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>"Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence."
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Perhaps now it's easier to see what Emerson was getting at. Stubbornly clinging to our beliefs and viewpoints and thus upholding a "foolish consistency" reduces us to nothing more than walking sets of conditioned behaviour and belief systems.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We close ourselves off to life, content to remain in a cosy yet blinded little mental bubble. It's a sorry way for consciousness to exist, for it's trapped and limited when it yearns to be free and to flow like water. Rather than existing in a state of vast expansiveness like the ocean -- a true reflection of our essential nature -- we become nothing more than little isolated rock pools filled with stagnant water.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That's why I now actually see inconsistency as a positive thing (although, like anything in life, moderation is the key). Why be consistent in my opinions, viewpoints, tastes, likes and dislikes? I no longer take my opinions quite as seriously as I used to. I still have them, and I express them when I feel the wish, but I no longer see them as absolutely important or everlasting. Some of my beliefs and viewpoints are very static, such as those relating to topics such as human and animal rights. Others are changing all the time, week by week. Music and food I like this month, I might be less keen on the following month. Artists I always loved might begin to hold less appeal, and those I was never into might suddenly 'click'. One week I announce I'm having a break from blogging because I've run out of things to say, then the next day I write two or three new blog entries. It might confuse others, but embracing this 'internal inconsistency' rather than trying to uphold rigidly consistent viewpoints makes life much more more fun and interesting.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If you're really honest with yourself, I'm sure you can see how your opinions, viewpoints and beliefs are changing all the time. They're not generally as static and set in stone as you might like to believe. The opinions and beliefs you now hold are no doubt different in subtle or major ways to those you held when you were a child, or those you'll hold as an elderly person. In fact, they might even be different to those you'll hold next week or next month.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Observing the natural inconsistency of our mental content frees us from overly identifying with it. It's still there, but we can take it less seriously and perhaps be a little more open-minded, freer in our opinions and find it easier to consider alternative viewpoints.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And also, here's a very important point -- the less meaning we invest in our thoughts, beliefs and opinions, the less we identify with them and invest our sense of 'self' in them...the less we suffer!
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Life becomes a little easier, more peaceful and it flows just a bit more. Consciousness is freed from its prison and that's one of the greatest steps to finding inner peace and joy. Consciousness just wants to flow freely and be unobstructed and unconstrained. If we allow it to flow, and follow it wherever it wants to go, then we can be amazed at the sheer feeling of liberation and exhilaration we experience.
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, my invitation is to stop being "foolishly consistent". Allow yourself to be inconsistent whenever you damn well feel like it. We may tend to be "creatures of habit", but there's no fun in that and it kind of deadens us to life. Instead be open, aware and see every moment as new and fresh. Allow yourself to relate to life in different ways. Always be prepared to re-evaluate your opinions, beliefs, ideas and even your tastes and preferences. Celebrate inconsistency! Have fun.</span>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-57316773533125415082012-01-28T15:55:00.000+00:002012-01-29T13:26:32.347+00:00The origin and nature of THOUGHT<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Have you ever stopped to wonder where your thoughts come from? Or are you so taken in by every movement of your mind that you’re barely even aware that you’re thinking most the time? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">WHO is that thinks -- and who is it that’s aware of what's being thought? Do <i>you</i> think, or do your thoughts essentially just think themselves? These are all very important questions, and the answers might well surprise you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">I invite you to investigate for yourself. A great practise is simply to sit and observe your thoughts. Ask yourself, “I wonder what my next thought will be?” Then sit quietly, alert and attentive, watching and waiting. You’ll likely come to some really interesting conclusions. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">I came to realise that 'WE’RE' not actually the thinker! Oh, sure, if we want to reflect on something, we can consciously direct our thoughts with our intention. But most of the time, we’re not the ones doing the thinking. If we were, then we’d always be able to <i>control and predict</i> our thoughts, but we can’t. Thoughts just happen, in awareness, like clouds of vapour rising up from the ocean, existing for a limited lifespan, then dissolving away again. Try the above practise, and keep doing it -- it’s fun, relaxing and liberating. You’ll see that you’re not actually the one doing the thinking. It’s more like the thinking is doing you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Thoughts just seem to rise and fall. ‘We’ are not the thoughts, for we cannot be that which is observable -- we are obviously the subject, not the object. That said, when we’re in our ‘normal’ mode of consciousness, we tend to get completely consumed and caught up in our thinking, automatically believing in and identifying with every thought, investing our very sense of self and being in these fickle movements of mind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">But if we’re not our thoughts, <i>then what are we? </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Investigate for yourself -- <i>what is it that’s watching and is aware of the thoughts...?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">No word or description is adequate for it, but it might be referred to as the 'watcher', the 'witness' or simply pure awareness. This, I believe, is our natural state, and it’s always with us, throughout our entire lives. No matter what’s happening outwardly or inwardly, no matter what our thoughts and beliefs are and no matter what configuration our personal psychology assumes, that pure space of awareness is ALWAYS there in the background, underlying our every experience in life. Without it, we’d simply cease to be. It’s like the paper on which the words (our thoughts and experiences) are written. Take away the paper and there’s nothing. But that’s a whole other discussion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Back to thoughts. Upon observation, you can see that thoughts are like clouds passing across the sky of your mind or awareness. Sometimes they’re light and fluffy and other times they’re thick and stormy, covering the whole sky. Sometimes they move across the sky quickly, chopping and changing, and other times, such as in meditation, sleep and times of deep relaxation, they slow down and perhaps even subside for a time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">So where do they come from? I don't believe thoughts 'magically' arise out of nowhere, although it might seem like that. The activity of our minds and the overall structure of our psyche is largely driven by what what in Sanskrit is called 'vasanas', or mental tendencies. Vasanas are like grooves that are created in the mind, much the same way as water flowing down a mountain carves grooves and channels in the rock. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">You might think of consciousness as being like water and it tends to flow along these grooves and this is what largely determines the content of our mind and pysche. Of course, it's possible to create new grooves and new vasanas by redirecting our consciousness and focussing on different thoughts, but that takes conscious effort. Outside of the 'base light' of awareness (the ‘paper’ on which the content appears), people's personalities and the structure of their minds are largely just vasanas and conditioning in operation, influenced by other factors such as environment, heredity and culture. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">This is what brought me to the realisation that it's not really 'me' that thinks all the thoughts that ripple across my mind. Upon investigation I came to see that the thinking just seems to flow of its own accord, as consciousness moves along those grooves. Kinda groovy, huh?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">So thoughts just tend to occur, driven largely by our conditioning and vasanas. They don’t have any independent existence/intelligence of their own, as they’re just the flow of consciousness assuming certain configurations. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">This isn’t to say we need be slave to these thoughts. On the contrary, when we realise that they’re just thoughts, movements in consciousness, then we can experience a tremendous amount of liberty and freedom from them!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">I used to suffer depression for several years, and I can see now how it was caused by the thoughts that were habitually occurring in my mind. I no longer take my thoughts nearly as seriously, because I’m very clear that they’re just thoughts -- they’re not reality, just crude (and very often distorted) reflections of reality. The depressed thoughts were just a kind of weather-front passing through me. When I learned to dis-identify from it and just witness it, I began to transcend it -- and it passed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">I highly recommend the practise of simply observing your thoughts. It creates a healthy detachment. Rather than being helplessly buffeted by every thought that crosses your mind, you come to realise that they are just the dream-like movements of consciousness and they have only the meaning you ascribe to them. They just rise and fall. They might be part of a chain of thoughts (clusters of thoughts can form and create big entangled structures that become beliefs, habitual thoughts and/or preoccupations) or they might be totally random. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">When we're 'unconscious', which means automatically buying into every thought that passes our mind, then we’re a slave to our thoughts and they can make us suffer -- and how! But when we simply observe and allow consciousness to flow as it does, without grasping onto it or obstructing it, then there's a tremendous freedom and liberty. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Nisargadatta said something that really stuck with me: he advised us to see the content of our consciousness -- our mind, thoughts, beliefs, emotions, etc -- as being something foreign or alien to us, something that's NOT 'us', but a process that's happening within us ('us' being, at the deepest level, the space of pure awareness I spoke of). This might be a radical notion to many, but I've found it very helpful. I still experience occasional low moods like everyone else, but I find it virtually impossible to be depressed these days, because I no longer unquestioningly BELIEVE all the thoughts that cross my mind, or give them an importance they simply don’t warrant. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">When our focus is freed from the movements of our mind, it can be redirected to the witness -- the awareness -- the sense of being, or whatever you want to call it. And in that core level of awareness, is an incredible sense of peace, contentment and joy. It’s the happiness we spend our lives seeking in the outer world and in other people, but which can only ever truly be found within us. This is probably the most important discovery we’ll ever make.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">So, try it. Watch your thoughts. Go beyond your them and trace them to their source. Be open, curious and aware. You might be amazed at what you discover.</span></div>
</div>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-66086726894868366732012-01-28T15:41:00.000+00:002012-01-28T15:46:58.419+00:00Resurrection<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I must seem like such a fickle creature. But actually there are reasons behind my fickleness. I decided I was going to close this blog and start a new one -- which I did. I liked the thought of a fresh start, a blank canvas and a taking slightly different approach to my blog content. I started this particular blog several years ago and I've changed a lot in that time. My perspectives, my understanding and my approach to life, spirituality and philosophy have shifted, grown and evolved a great deal and I wanted to draw a line under the stuff I've written in the past and start back at zero. </span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's been fun. But the thing is, despite having stopped posting here, this old blog was still getting about 10 times the number of page views than my newer blog (which in fact hardly anyone was reading!). I don't exactly know how these things work, I assume it's because it's because it's older and more established and has a greater number of 'back links' or whatever. But it seemed a bit pointless to spend the amount of time I have been creating new essays and blog content and posting it to a blog that hardly gets any hits, when I could post it a blog that routinely gets quite a few. </span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, I now end that particular experiment and am resuscitating this blog. I'll update it with the content from my aborted new blog, and keep this one going. Hope you'll bear with me. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In addition to this, I also have another blog over on Wordpress, <a href="http://dreamlightfugitive.wordpress.com/">Dreamlight Fugitive</a>, which is focussed on creativity, writing and art. And I've been updating my <a href="http://daily-tao.blogspot.com/">Daily Tao</a> blog with completely re-written and re-edited commentaries on all 81 verses of the Tao Te Ching. Hope you enjoy :)</span>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-55343976085956415472011-11-13T14:47:00.001+00:002011-11-13T14:57:05.963+00:00The (Neo) Advaita TrapBack already! Wow. So I realised I will pop in from time to time when I have something to share.<br />
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This video is actually rather hilarious; certainly if you've had an experience of the "neo advaita" crowd that seems to proliferate the internet and that has spread across the spiritual marketplace like fungus. Now, I am very drawn to authentic advaita and could write at length about it. I've found the teachings of sages such as Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta, and some of the advaita scriptures to be extremely helpful.<br />
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What seems to have happened however is that advaita has been distorted by a great many people, mainly westerners I believe, who have created a distorted variation and who sadly tend to become exactly the kind of obstinate, superior pains in the arse portrayed in the video. I'm sure you'll have encountered some of them. I feel there are a great many people out there who genuinely believe they're enlightened simply because their mind has latched onto a certain set of perspectives and beliefs relating to nonduality. They maybe have awakened a little, but if they have to spend all their time 'teaching' others how wrong they are and how 'enlightened' they are, then...meh. There's nothing stinks more than the spiritual ego. They serve as a lesson to us all how easy it is for the ego to hijack virtually anything. Truly, nothing is sacred to the ego! Nothing requires greater vigilance than the 'spiritual path'.<br />
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Enjoy the vid, it's really funny:<br />
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<p><a href="http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7262997/the-advaita-trap-the-cartoon" target="_new" style="font-size: 14px;font-weight:bold;">The Advaita Trap - The Cartoon</a><br />by: <a href="http://www.xtranormal.com/profile/3606857" style="" target="_new">nondualxtra</a></p><iframe id="xtranormal_The Advaita Trap - The Cartoon" name="xtranormal_The Advaita Trap - The Cartoon" style="width:480px;height:299px;" src="http://www.xtranormal.com/xtraplayr/7262997/the-advaita-trap-the-cartoon" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" border="0" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto"></iframe>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-63449299387957975612011-11-10T14:50:00.000+00:002012-01-28T16:01:06.782+00:00Silence is golden<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's funny, I keep starting to write blog posts, but I can never seem to get beyond the first couple of paragraphs. It's like trying to build sandcastles when the sand is too dry and the whole thing just sort of collapses! </span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Perhaps it's because I don't have anything that really, truly needs to be said. I've had a few ideas for topics, but the moment I get down to the nitty-gritty of writing, I realise that it's either something I'm not fully ready to write about, or it's something that doesn't need to be written about. I'm not going to churn out stuff just to fill up a quota. I'd rather just sit in the silence and watch clouds (it's neat - I recommend it).</span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, for now the blog is on hiatus. Whether it'll be a long or short hiatus I have no idea. I do know that I've been meaning to wind this down for a while now. I have two new blogs in the planning stages, so I'll still be around. But those are on hold as well until I feel I have something worth writing about, something that needs to be written. Until then, take care and have fun. </span>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-80433717751285271972011-10-21T17:49:00.000+01:002011-10-21T17:50:15.398+01:00Is Art Important?<br />
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">As an artist who hasn't exactly made it 'big' (think considerably less than big), I was recently questioning my future and wondering whether I should be devoting my energy to something else. As the economy continues to flounder and as our esteemed leaders continue to make things worse, people are tightening their belts and luxuries such as the arts are obviously the first things to be abstained from. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Always one to question just about everything, I found myself wondering whether art really matters. Is it really important? Is it worth pursuing? Or is it just a self-indulgence that has no real value to our lives? (When considering this question, I was reflecting not merely on visual art, but also music, prose and poetry, sculpture, film-making, etc)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">I instinctively feel that art has importance. But there are two kinds of art, I think. There's art that's created simply to make money and is tailored to a specific market or audience and which usually adheres to a specific formula while perhaps simultaneously attempting to pass itself off as something 'different'. This might sound exceptionally snobbish, but to me, that isn't art, it's merely product. Most of the music industry is product and in our X-Factor era that's a fact that's hard to dispute. I feel the same about a great deal of the publishing and film industry. It's driven by profit and the desire to sell; any claims of wanting to find genuine artistic innovation are usually just lip-service.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Product generally has mass-market appeal and is largely consumed as entertainment. Nothing wrong with entertainment, I like to be entertained as much as the next guy (although maybe perhaps not QUITE so much), but entertainment rarely transcends its function. There are certainly lots of instances where it does, where films, music and books actually do take risks and wholly deserve to be called 'art', but in the vast marketplace it's still the exception rather than the rule. I’m not decrying this, simply pointing out a fact. People need to make money and they do that by selling products to as many people as will buy it. It’s the way the world works. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">With regard to the visual arts, it's a little harder to find the distinction between art and product. It's a grey area. Artists need to eat like everyone else, so they usually need to have some kind of target market in mind when they create. The quality and importance of the work is entirely subjective and that’s probably the way it should be.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">I was at an exhibition just last week and it reinforced my feeling that in order for art to be taken seriously as 'art' it helps if it's grim and bleak. In order to be a 'cool' artist the general criteria seems to be that your work has to be edgy, dark and a little depressing or -- even better -- repulsive! Now this could all just be in my head, and I don't even take my own thoughts and opinions that seriously any more, so I urge you not to, either. But it's possible that even some of the most fiercely independent and 'out there' artists are still just creating stuff that they consciously or unconsciously think fits a formula of ‘cool’ and ticks the right boxes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Myself, I really don't care what's cool or not. Generally I'm drawn to create things that inspire people rather than nauseate and repulse them. I mean, life is difficult enough, why should art confound that by making us ever more miserable? But that said, when I view someone's work, even if I don't like it, I still usually respect it as a creative endeavour, as an expression of the artist and an artistic statement -- whether or not I agree with that statement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">So why is art important then? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">It's not important simply for making statements. Anyone can make a statement and like anything that's mind-generated, it ultimately doesn't mean that much. A lot of the time it's straight from the ego, and there's already enough of the human ego stamped over this world of ours. Art in service of the ego may still be art, but it's not, in my view, important art.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">I believe art is important when it has a transcendent quality; when it points us beyond the surface-level miasma of humdrum human existence -- what Buddhists refer to as samsara -- and hints of the possibility of something greater, something beyond. I believe art, in its highest expression, serves to remind us who we are. Through images, stories, narratives and sound, it reflects back to us what we truly are. There's a place for examining the surface-level world of maya, but we don't really need art for that, we simply need to look around us or turn on the six o'clock news. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">But it's possible for art to take us deeper into ourselves, inviting us ask questions about ourselves and life itself. <i>Who are we? Where did this consciousness come from and where is it going? What is the world? Where did it come from and where is it going? Is it everything we've always assumed it to be, or is it possible we've somehow misperceived the universe, ourselves and our relation to it?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">I've come to learn that the answer is never in the answers. It's in the questions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">At best, I believe, art can make us reflect upon these questions; questions that serve to bring us back to ourselves. Just about everything else in the world is pulling our attention outward and distracting us from OUR SELVES (which is actually the very thing we're truly seeking in life -- direct, conscious awareness of our own being).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Some time ago I was sent one of those email questionnaire things and one of the questions was "do you prefer art or technology?" and I was amazed at the number of people (practically everyone) that said technology. I probably shouldn't have been, for nowadays technology is almost like a drug or religion for many people. There’s nothing wrong with that in itself, but what can technology do but distract us from ourselves? It's never going to compel us to venture inward and perhaps, in time, stumble upon the in-built but long-dormant self-realisation mechanism -- which is the only legitimate end to the cycle of suffering that drives us to seek out distractions in the first place.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">I still feel compelled to create art, to write and create music because I feel something within me wants to be born into the world. I don't think it's in service of the ego or just to express emotions or viewpoints (although the latter point I suppose you could debate). If there's any purpose at all behind what I do, it's because there's some element -- and it's not really on a conscious level -- that would like to use this channel to spark something in others. A spark of inspiration, of remembering, of insight? Or just an opening that might prompt further questions? I'm not entirely sure. I don't feel it's entirely 'me' that's controlling the process. It just is. It's unfolding as it wants to.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">I first had an inkling as to this when I began my first novel, a number of years ago. I thought - "yeah, my novel is going to change the world and make people happier and more enlightened." I think my ego crept in, in the nicest and kindest possible way. Now, I have no such expectations. I don't know if what I make will sell or interest anyone, much less whether it will enlighten them. That's really not my business and I no longer have any investment in the outcome. I just do what I feel compelled to do, because I have to and because a little part of me would wither away if I didn't. A rose doesn't bloom in order to make people happy and get some kind of a reaction. It doesn't hold itself back, either. It just does what it does, because...!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">So that's basically why I feel art is important. There are many artists (not necessarily mainstream ones or ones with great followings and publicity) whose work serves as kind of opening into something greater. It can serve as a catalyst that makes people stop, reflect and open themselves to new possibilities and new ways of seeing life. It can pierce the dream bubble and spark something quite wonderful, enabling the viewer/experiencer to blossom themselves. Maybe they'll then bring that same essence into the world where it will have a similar effect on others, whether it's in the form of art, behaviour, actions or simply BEING.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">No motives though. It just happens -- or it doesn't. And it has an effect on others and the world -- or it doesn't. Art is alive and when it comes from a place beyond the ego and beyond consumer concerns and market pressures, it has the ability to change us and to change the world. Not change us in the sense of making us something other than we are, but simply removing the clouds of illusion that currently obstruct so many of us from being what we are. Art then can be a great wake-up call, which will resonate for those that are ready for it and go straight over the heads of those that aren't.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">For now, if I'm able, I'll continue to respond to the creative impulses that compel me to create art in different forms, knowing that the impulse to create is there for a reason, that I'm not truly in control of it and that the reasons and outcome are way beyond my control. Some artists fall into the trap of ego, mistakenly believing it's them that is responsible for their creations. But for me, it's the humblest job in the world. I don't own creativity, I can't control it and I'm fully aware that it's not really me that does anything (and frankly I don’t even consider myself particularly talented). </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It just <i>happens</i> and I’m very cool with that, because it feels good. I'm really very clear on that point -- and it's a strangely liberating realisation!</span></div>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-76330690851850040192011-10-17T13:25:00.000+01:002012-01-28T16:02:10.059+00:00The Headless Way<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.lookagain.ca/images/headless-composite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.lookagain.ca/images/headless-composite.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Hello! Long time no blog! There is a new entry in the works - I know what I want to write, but I just haven't figured out how to write it. It'll come, when the time is right.</span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the meantime, check out this - </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.headless.org/english-welcome.htm">http://www.headless.org/english-welcome.htm</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's a website based on the work of Douglas E Harding and his rather novel, quirky and fun method of self-inquiry: "the headless way". </span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I've never come across anything quite like it. Try doing the "experiments", which are fun experiential too for leading us into a deeper awareness of what we truly are. I haven't done them all yet, I've been doing them one at a time over a period of weeks, but I love them so far and wouldn't hesitate to recommend them. I've come to view self-inquiry as THE most important spiritual practise there is, particularly in terms of self-realisation. This is an offbeat and neat way to approach it :)</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Some notes I found on the <a href="http://www.headless.org/english-welcome.htm">website</a>, in the words of Douglas Harding:</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"So much unnecessary stress has its origin in identifying exclusively with the way others see us. Overlooking and invalidating my own point of view, I make a mistake about my deepest identity and find myself up against the world, separate from others, limited in my resources, vulnerable to all kinds of danger, and in the end, destined to die. It was vital to become self-conscious, to grow out of infancy into adulthood, but this need not be the end of the journey.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Each of us can now go on to see Who we really are. This doesn't mean that we regress to infancy - we can be aware of both our True Identity and our human identity. However, becoming aware of our True Identity means we discover a stress-free space at the heart of our sometimes stressed lives. It is up to each of us how much we pay attention to this Resource.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If we don't drink from this Well, we will probably find ourselves complaining of thirst, or even dying of thirst. And all the while the Water is so close, and free! Take a drink. Now. What have you got to lose? Your self! What have you got to gain? Everything, including your self!</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[...]</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If I fail to see what I am (and especially what I am not) it’s because I’m too busily imaginative, too “spiritual”, too adult and knowing, too credulous, too intimidated by society and language, too frightened of the obvious to accept the situation exactly as I find it at this moment. Only I am in a position to report on what’s here. A kind of alert naivety is what I need. It takes an innocent eye and an empty head (not to mention a stout heart) to admit their own perfect emptiness.<br /><br />Forgetting what I'm told and imagine, what society with its common sense and the science of the object tell me to believe, and at last daring to look for myself and to take seriously what I find - well, what do I find? I find surprise upon surprise, beyond my wildest dreams. I<em> see that what I had believed to be true of me and of the world is a pack of lies!</em> <i>"</i></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-30094393740156667892011-09-16T13:06:00.000+01:002011-09-18T20:54:41.869+01:00Integrity<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 12px;"><i>(I wrote this post a few weeks ago but for some reason held it back. Now seemed like as good enough a time as any to share it though, so here goes)</i></span><br />
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What does integrity mean to you?</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I get the impression that people generally take it to mean being true to their word and treating other people well. But I think there's a lot more to it than that. When looking up the word in my handy little dictionary app, it comes up with three meanings.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>in*teg*ri*ty</b></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">- noun</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">1. adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">2. the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">3. a sound, unimpaired or perfect condition.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The first definition doesn't appeal to me that much. Moral and ethical principles are mind-generated and are therefore coloured and distorted by the mind's inherent limitations. I agree with Lao-tzu that the highest virtue comes not from following mind-made morals and ideals (which are usually just conditioned into us by the culture we live in), but from being rooted in our own sense of BEING. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">When we're aligned with Self, we spontaneously act from 'rightness' because we're in alignment with the innate flow and perfection of Life expressing through us. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The one word that does jump out at me from that first definition is 'honesty'. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I believe the essence of integrity is being honest to who and what we truly are. This is something so few of us actually do, because again we're indoctrinated by a culture that demands we do the exact opposite, wanting us to follow its ideals and nothing more. The only problem is, it's impossible to be true to anyone or anything other than our Self. For truth isn't out there and it never was. "To thine own Self be true" -- great words by Shakespeare, and perhaps the best definition of integrity there is.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I love the other two definitions of integrity because they perfectly point to this Self-honesty I'm talking about. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">When we know what are, when we've really delved deeply beneath the surface and journeyed through all the layers of mental sediment, conditioning and ego-identification, we come to that place of expansive emptiness/fullness within us at the core of our being, the very ground of our awareness. You've either experienced this or you haven't, which will make all the difference between understanding what I'm trying to point to and thinking I'm just talking utter gibberish. Because you're reading this at all, I'm going to assume that you've had at least some taste of the deeper Reality of Being.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">When we've experienced some degree of Self-knowledge, when we've seen through the screen of our minds, egos and conditioning to the deeper Reality beneath, then part of us is never the same again. Sure, it's extremely difficult to hold onto and sustain this realisation. It's one thing having transcendent spiritual realisations in meditation and quite another thing maintaining them in our daily lives. Our minds and egos have deep grooves and exert a tremendous gravity that keeps the old structures firmly in place (and let's face it, everything in the world around us is also designed to keep the ego in the drivers seat). </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">But when you've seen the TRUTH, even just a little glimmer of it, you can never go back to the way you were before, at least not entirely and not forever. A little sliver of sunlight has got through a crack in the brick wall of your mind/psyche/ego (a hefty construction if ever there was!), and it wants to shine again. It'll take any little gap it can get and surely, in time, as the bricks start to erode and dissolve -- as they inevitably will, whether by grace, by pain or by death. As this happens, the light gets its chance to shine through, ever stronger and brighter, dispelling the darkness of ignorance and illusion and allowing the truth of life to be seen, experienced and realised.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Perhaps you can now see why I was so enamoured by the dictionary definition of integrity as being "the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished" and "a sound, unimpaired or perfect condition." Isn't that a pretty much perfect description of enlightenment? Is it possible that integrity is in fact synonymous with enlightenment? I'm beginning to think so. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">My feeling is that enlightenment is the seeing through of what is false and the realisation of what is true. First comes the recognition of truth and then the integration of that into the entirety of our being. For enlightenment to be true, it has to penetrate every aspect of our being and lives. It's no use having a strictly mental and/or conceptual understanding of reality -- lots of people have that and they're about as enlightened as plant pots. </span>Some people might understand what I'm talking about, and they might even have experienced it, and yet still don't truly GET it on the deeper levels of their being. They might intellectually know that they're the transcendent Reality, yet in their daily lives still behave not unlike like the most monstrously insane egos out there.</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">This is why I think integrity is such an important thing to reflect upon, particularly for ‘spiritual people’. Integrity isn't as big an issue for people that are completely under the spell of their minds and egos, because they’re too deeply immersed in a world of dreams and illusions and have no conception of what they truly are. Self-integrity is impossible when you don’t even know your Self!</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">But those that have had some degree of awakening, yet are still operating from the level of ego, then I think integrity is a huge issue. As I said, it takes a certain amount of time and effort to break free of the gravity of the old mind structures, but it's something that ultimately has to be done. Until we do, there's a deep divide at the core of our beings; a gulf between who we truly are and who we're choosing to be in our daily lives. Whether we're aware of it or not, this inner conflict causes enormous pain and is most likely reflected by all kinds of difficulties and problems in our outer lives. It's impossible to be at peace and to flow with life as long as we have this fundamental lack of integrity eating away at us from the inside out.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The ego can deceive us in a million different ways. That's not to make the ego into an enemy, or even something tangible and real, because it's not; it's really just a detour from truth and can be overcome each and every time we move back to that truth. Whenever we catch ourselves suffering, even if it’s just a bad mood, it's likely a sign that we're out of integrity, that we're lost in our thoughts, concepts and egos again. When that happens we’re probably trying to hold life to ransom, as we so often do when we're relating to life from that level. Above all, it's a sign that although we know the truth, we aren't in that moment LIVING it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I hope I've managed to convey why I feel integrity is so vitally important, especially for those of us in the process of awakening. Perhaps enlightenment (the recognition of truth) is just the first step, while integrity (the embodiment of that truth) is the crucial second step. Enlightenment is actually pretty easy because when we lay the appropriate foundations and invite it in, it comes more or less of its own accord. Integrity, on the other hand, requires a massive amount of vigilance, honesty and persistent effort on our part...</span></div>
Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-2131390093631548412011-08-10T17:29:00.004+01:002011-08-10T17:44:13.862+01:00The Future<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><b>“I used to think about the future and then it became the present, so I thought about it quite often then and then it was in the past, so I didn’t think about it that much.”</b></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><b><i>Father Ted</i></b></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">One of the things that has frequently tripped me up over the years is the notion of future. It’s easy to get lost in it and for concerns and insecurities about the future to overwhelm us, causing untold stress and turmoil. In fact, when it comes to mindstuff, the ‘future’ can be like a gaping black hole, ravenous, all-consuming and virtually impossible to escape.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">The ego loves its security and in a world where security is ultimately an illusion (after all, anything at any moment could compromise your sense of security), that can be something of a problem. The future is the great unknown and that is something that utterly terrifies the ego!</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">To minimise this sense of unease we adopt all kinds of strategies for trying to control circumstances and outcomes as much as possible. Again, going back to what I wrote previously about control, that can only work to a limited extent. We can pursue the things that we think will bring us fortune and security and we may even succeed; but even when we do, it’s rarely enough to dispel our fears and insecurity. This is because our insecurity is a structural component of the ego. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">In a sense, our insecurity over the future is a legitimate concern, because we really don’t know what the future holds. Bad things can and frequently do happen. I think it’s likely our fear of the future/unknown is a survival mechanism that’s developed to protect us from potential harm by always keeping us on our toes. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'lucida grande';">Yet in our modern world, where our immediate physical survival isn’t usually an issue, this survival mechanism has become a stress mechanism.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">In this media-dominated information age, it’s virtually impossible to escape the news and the news is rarely good. We don’t just leave it at that though. We take what’s happening and project it into an imagined future, playing out all kinds of horrific scenarios in our minds. Sometimes it’s necessary to project ahead in this way as it allows us to make prudent choices that avert unnecessary catastrophe. If I’m walking along a train track and a train appears in the distance, it’s prudent that I project into the future and realise that if I don’t step aside, I’ll get squished.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">There are times when this is a useful practise and times when it becomes highly dysfunctional. For we tend to get lost in our imaginings, creating entire alternate realities in our minds. We forget that it’s just fantasy and actually believe that what we’re imagining is real. I believe it’s this tendency that creates much of our anxiety and fear over the future.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">Two things have helped me to deal with this. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'lucida grande';">The first is the recognition that the future is actually an illusion of the mind; and so, for that matter, is the past. The only thing that actually exists is the present moment and that present moment NEVER ENDS. In spite of this concept we have of past, present and future, there’s never an instance where the present becomes the past, or becomes the future. It’s a continuing, unbroken, unfragmented whole.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">The present moment just IS -- and it always will be. Of course the CONTENT of the present moment is always changing and it is from this that we’ve derived the notions of ‘past’ and ‘future’. But past and future don’t actually exist. However hard you were to look, you could never actually find them because the only place they exist is in the mind; the past as memories and the future as imagination, expectation or anticipation. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">What a terrible mess we get ourselves in over something that exists nowhere other than our own minds! However long we wait, the future will never arrive. All we have is this moment, this timeless, eternal moment, the form of which is continuously shifting and changing.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">The second thing that’s helped me deal with this structural insecurity is the recognition that I’m not what I think I am. Along with the concept of time, another core human assumption is that we are our bodies. I’m not going to go too deeply into this for now and I’ll assume that if you’re reading this you’ve already got some sense that what you are is something more than just a bag of bones, tissues and liquids. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">But even when, on a conceptual level, we know that we are something deeper than the surface-level appearance, it takes a while for us to fully embody and integrate that realisation. In other words, we usually still act and react as though we are just our bodies. And because we know that ultimately our body is going to die, we have a fundamental insecurity that underlies every second of our existence, whether we’re aware of it or not. I’d even go so far as to say that the root of our fear of the future is fear of the termination of the body.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">But when the realisation that we are something far transcendent of form takes root not just in our head, but in our heart and our gut, this underlying existential insecurity begins to loosen its grip. When we truly know with the entirety of our being that we are eternal and deathless, then we cease to fear the inevitable dissolution of our form. Our bodies change throughout the course of our lives and the content of our minds and psyche changes from moment to moment. But this timeless awareness that we are remains unchanged. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">If you’ve ever explored and moved into this primal awareness, you’ll notice that it at its core is a deep and expansive acceptance. It doesn’t hold life to ransom and it doesn’t have demands or like and dislikes or even goals and directives. It just allows life to be as it is. It remains open, untouched and untouchable.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">Knowing what we are and questioning the content of our minds lead us to a deeper and infinitely more secure state of being. Life still happens around us and at times it’s distressing and grim, but when we’ve removed some of our investment of ‘selfhood’ from what is ultimately transient and insubstantial, we experience far greater freedom than ever before. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">The need to desperately control the future lessens. We come to see the primary importance of living well in the present moment. We can surrender to a greater intelligence, of which we are an inextricable part, and allow that intelligence to guide us rather than our fears and doubts.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">When we surrender to the flow of life, we come to see that that no matter what the ‘future’ (or, rather, the forthcoming configuration of the eternal present) holds, we will be fine. That which we are is ultimately untouchable. Whether our future contains fortune or misfortune, we will be fine. We will always be fine. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">When we’ve let go of our insecurities, our attachments and our desperate need to control life, we’ve let go of the very obstructions that make life difficult in the first place. And when we do encounter life’s inevitable challenges, we deal with them with greater ease and grace, always returning to our innate sense of balance and wellbeing. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">I believe that when we’re in this Tao-centred state of being, connected with the flow of life and the truth of what we are, then life is often kinder and gentler. Moreover, our state of being has a positive effect on those around us and the world at large.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">So why worry about the future when we can instead move our attention inward and allow life to guide us? We can flow gently and smoothly with the current of life and be led exactly where we need to be.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>
<br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">Maybe life really CAN be that simple? Even if I’m wrong, what a way to live!</span></span></p>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-63038841207315059902011-08-05T15:54:00.007+01:002011-08-05T19:33:49.438+01:00Control<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">I’ve been using the Sedona Method technique of emotional releasing for a while now and I’ve found it immensely helpful. It’s the simplest, easiest way I’ve yet come across for releasing negative emotions. What’s especially interesting is that whenever you feel bad, you are urged to trace the emotion back to one of four underlying WANTS: wanting control, wanting approval, wanting security or wanting to be separate.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">I’ve found it amazing that just about every negative emotion can be traced to a basic sense of wanting control. It seems to me that at a core, fundamental level, human beings (or more specifically, human egos) are control-freaks. However subtly or overtly this manifests itself, we’re in the business of wanting control just about everything, just about all the time.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">I suppose from the moment we’re born we learn that to get our needs met we have to try to control our environment and those around us. When we’re hungry or uncomfortable or have a poopy nappy, we don’t hesitate to make our discomfort known - and the louder the better. This in itself is a basic means of control, because we quickly learn that crying gets us what we need. The art of control is thus learned at a very young age and as we grow up, it continues to develop in an infinite number of ways. Life, and other people, are seen as things that we have to control in order to get our needs met and in order to be happy.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">It’s not until we stop and think about it that we realise the countless ways in which we try to control our environment, our lives and other people. Sometimes the ways in which we desire to control things are quite obvious, whereas other times they are so subtle as to be imperceptible. But, make no mistake, it’s going on all the time!</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">From the moment we wake up in the morning (which is normally controlled with the aid of our alarm clock), we enter each situation in our daily lives with an agenda. We want to do and achieve certain things and we want situations, meetings and transactions to go a certain way, so we invest a great deal of effort to ensure that’s what happens. We want people to treat us a certain way, so we spend inordinate amounts of time and energy trying to control them and influence how they respond to us.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">If we look closely enough, we can see how we try to control virtually aspect of our lives: from our bodies, health, appearance, diet and sleep patterns to our activities, jobs and careers and our relationships, social standing and the opinions of other people. What is the average human life, if not an exercise in extreme control-freakery?</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">Now I suppose you could argue that it’s necessary to try to control such things, otherwise our lives would spiral out of control and implode in a catastrophe of chaos and disorder. That’s the way the ego sees it and that’s how it justifies its pathological need to try and micro-manage the universe.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">But I’ve come to see that control is ultimately an illusion. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">It’s a fiction the mind gets hooked into, a mode of functioning that underlies every nuance of its operating software. It fails to see that its perpetual attempts to control are akin to a hamster running in a wheel. No matter how much energy and effort it invests in trying to control every aspect of life, it’s not going to get you that far.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">Because just how much can we actually control in life? Honestly?</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">I’d argue that ultimately there’s very little we really have control over. As valiantly as we might try, we can’t control other people - at least not completely, and not all the time. Aside from ensuring we give it the proper fuel, rest and exercise it needs, we don’t control our bodies; our bodies do what they do and they’re inevitably going to get grow old and die. We don’t have much, if any, control over our environment and culture, or the circumstances in which we find ourselves.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">And here’s the thing: the more we try to control anything, the more we suffer. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">We suffer when we don’t get what we want. And we often suffer just as much when we do get what we want. Perhaps this is because we’ve created so much tension and resistance in ourselves that we’re unable to relax enough to enjoy the fruits of our labours. In any case, the mind is rarely satisfied with what it’s got and is immediately ready to fixate on its next object of conquest. It’s a vicious cycle. The more we control, the more we’re dissatisfied and the more we suffer.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">Yet letting go of control is a truly heinous notion to most people. The thought of being out of control is unthinkable and is tantamount to a kind of death (and it is a kind of death in a way; death of the ego!). Yet if we take an honest look at the ways in which we try to control life, the ultimate futility of our efforts, and the way it causes us pain, we might find the courage to adopt a totally radical and quite revolutionary approach: letting go of our control over life.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">What I’ve discovered is that the moment I let go of wanting to control anything, I feel free and at peace. I believe letting go of the need to control is one of the greatest keys to freedom and peace of mind. Paradoxically, when I know that I’m not in control of life, I feel at one with life and things just seem to flow; no stress, no worry, no resistance!</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">Whenever I feel bad, or whenever things have become sticky and messy, it’s usually attributable to trying to impose control on things. This has happened with my physical health. The more I’ve tried to improve my health, the more determined I’ve been to get better and the more regimented I’ve been with my diet, supplements, and so forth, the worse I’ve actually become. I can only assume it’s because the more we struggle with things, the more tension and resistance we create within us. This tends to close us down, cutting us off from the innate flow of life, whereas when we relinquish the need to control, it releases tension and promotes lightness, ease and flow.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">I invite everyone to experiment with letting go of their need to control life. If something’s been causing you pain or suffering, it’s a sure sign that instead of trying to exert more control over the situation, you need to do the opposite and practise letting go. It’s so simple yet miraculous in the way it shifts our energy and reconnects us with our innate sense of wellbeing and flow. At the very least, whether the situation changes or not, you’ll experience a deep sense of relief, release and inner peace. But don’t take my word for it - try it for yourself!</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">When we let go of our attempts to control life, life takes over: and life can do things infinitely better than our precious little egos ever could. It’s as though a deeper intelligence springs into action and gets things back into balance again. When we’re no longer creating obstructions (and our obstructions almost always originate in the mind), things naturally settle themselves and come into harmony. This can be seen in nature. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">As long as there are no obstructions, a lake remains placid and still, for that is its nature. Our attempts to control creates waves in the water, shattering the calm and stirring up all kinds of muck and debris. Pretty soon the water is choppy and muddy, as a result of our desperation to impose our will. Just letting go is enough to allow the water to naturally balance and settle itself. There’s nothing we need to do. Why not let go of control as much as you possibly can and allow life to flow? You might be amazed at the results.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><br /><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">“Let go of your hold on life and allow life to simply flow around and through you.” John C Parkin</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';font-size:100%;">Ahhhhhh. The sense of relief is amazing!</span></span></p>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-12564826302474054312011-07-14T15:10:00.000+01:002011-07-14T15:11:32.949+01:00Life Strips us down<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">On a couple of occasions I’ve seen the Dalai Lama quoted as saying that the purpose of life is to be happy. On the surface this seems like a somewhat superficial statement, but of course there’s a lot more to it than that. I’m sure if he was to elaborate on that, he might explain that in order to achieve any stable and lasting sense of happiness, we must first transcend the ordinary state of human consciousness, which keeps us locked in perpetual bondage. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The predominant state of human consciousness is what Buddhists call ‘samsara’ and is a vicious cycle of craving, grasping and suffering, all the while being lost in layers upon layers of mind-created illusion. The hallmark of samsara - which is the software that just about everyone on the planet is operating from - is suffering. It’s a divisive, fragmented and distorted state of consciousness, in which awareness temporarily fixated upon and loses itself in form.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This isn’t to say that samsara is somehow ‘wrong’, or that it shouldn’t be. It is. Maybe it’s a necessary evolutionary stage for the unfolding of consciousness. What happens with the average human being is that consciousness arises in form and then loses itself in a thick treacly soup of mind-stuff; concepts, beliefs, ideas and delusion. That’s not the end of the journey though. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I believe there’s an in-built mechanism by which, at some point, consciousness transcends the limitations of samsara and awakens out of all false identifications and begins to become aware of itself again. Instead of seeing life through a screen of mind-made concepts, the barriers of belief and false identification begin to crumble and we begin to see and experience life simply as it is. When this happens there’s a great purging and stripping away. It’s not that something is added to ourselves, it’s not that we learn or become anything new. It’s more that on a mental and emotional level, layer after layer of sediment is scoured and dislodged and for the first time we can see reality clearly.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">To be free of the dense conditioning of mind is the great liberation and a true flowering of human consciousness. Freed of the accumulation of thoughts and beliefs, conditioning and prejudice, likes and dislikes, expectations and interpretations, life is simply experienced as it is, and separation is supplanted by a realisation of the great oneness of all life. This process of awakening has been described in different ways and called by different names by many different people and cultures. It’s something that fascinates me and I am convinced that this unfolding is ultimately a natural part of the evolution of consciousness. It’s still very rare in this world, which is so coarse, dense and heavy, for everything about our society is designed to keep the rigid structures of mind and ego firmly cemented in place.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The importance of this process of awakening cannot be underemphasised and I believe that life actually wants it to happen. Alas, the human mind is so deeply entrenched in the delusion of separation and false identification, that we dig our heels in the mud and are generally resistant to the natural flowering of consciousness. We don’t make it easy for ourselves at all. Even people that have a degree of spiritual awareness and have embarked on a quest for enlightenment tend to block the process by continuing to cling to beliefs and mind-stuff, looking for things to add to themselves rather than surrendering and allowing all that is untrue to be stripped away from them. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Authentic spiritual unfolding is not a process of accumulation and addition; I think it’s quite the opposite. It’s a matter of subtraction and elimination, in which all that is untrue must be peeled away like layers of an onion until we eventually reach the very core. It’s a process of loss in many ways and it’s not as comfortable and pleasant as we might like. It’s relatively easy to substitute one doctrine or belief system for another. But it takes a lot more courage to be willing to let go of ALL beliefs, all concepts, all interpretations until we are stripped to the core of what we are. Then we stand naked and unmasked, as vulnerable and raw as a newborn child, yet liberated and unfettered by the chains of mind. Something beautiful is born; something that was there all along, but just buried under layer upon layer of sediment.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Just as it’s the destiny of most plants to eventually flower, I believe the same is true for us. Life doesn’t necessarily bring us what will make us superficially happy, but it brings us the circumstances and situations that will eventually enable us to flower. So all the shit that’s happening around you is simply fertiliser! Life WANTS the rose to bloom and all the right conditions and circumstances conspire to allow it to happen. Similarly, life wants us to awaken, to transcend the limitations of our current operating software and to realise the totality of what we are. It wants us to strip away all that’s untrue and it sends us the necessary conditions, circumstances and challenges that will facilitate this process.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Most people are highly resistant, of course. We have a sense of self, a notion of who we think we are, and entire lifetimes are spent maintaining, upholding and strengthening this ultimately fictitious entity. Whenever life tries to strip that identity away from us, we resist and we suffer. Ultimately life is going to get its own way, whether we like it or not. No matter how much we struggle against the inevitable, eventually our form identity will die and the illusion will be forcibly ended, at least for a while. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Death is a kind of Ctrl+alt+del. But the sages invite us to perform a ctrl+alt+del while we’re still alive; to allow life to strip away all the layers of accumulated mind-stuff, to peel away all that is false and illusory. Ultimately it’s going to happen. No dream can last indefinitely; eventually the dream ends and the dreamer again regains self-awareness. Life is continually trying to nudge us awake, to enable us to become self-aware during the dream. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Why do we resist so much? We’ve been told that the only way to true peace and happiness is to awaken fully and transcend samsara. Why do we so rigidly cling onto our false little dream? Perhaps it requires a great leap of faith. That’s the challenge we face. We can either keep resisting and holding on to a fading dream or we can cooperate with the unfolding of consciousness within us. We can allow life to strip away all that is false. That which is Real, that which is truly what we are, can obviously never be taken from us, so no matter how much is pruned away and no matter how much we seem to lose, we can never lose ourselves. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Perhaps that’s what self realisation is; realising That which can never be taken from us, which alone is real. Only the Real can bring us happiness -- and I truly believe that whether we choose to cooperate or not, life is leading us toward that. Whatever is happening in your life, you can be sure the message is something like this: wake up, wake up. You’ve been in bud for so long. Now it’s time to bloom. Let go and allow it to happen.</span></span></span></p>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-41017783177534961202011-06-11T15:06:00.003+01:002011-06-11T15:16:42.545+01:00Words from Eladria<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 28.3px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I'm a bad blogger. I admit it. I've hardly written anything in months. In my defence, I've been distracted by health issues and struggling with other creative projects, but I plan to write much more in the future - in fact, I have a whole new blog planned. Until then, here's a little extract from one of the aforementioned creative projects - 'Eladria', the novel I'm just finishing off (and I'm getting there, it's just a matter of continually polishing away!). I think these words and snippets of dialogue make sense out of context. I'm not sure why, but I </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande'; font-size: small; ">felt like sharing them here, in the hopes they might make sense to people. To me, they sum up the truth of our existence, and all that we strive to realise (I was going to say 'strive to become', but we already ARE that! Strive to realise is probably closer to it). </span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 28.3px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 28.3px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“The universe is but a play of duality, cradled in an infinite heart of unity, infused with a single life essence, a fount from which all forms arise. Darkness has its part to play. Without darkness, there could be no recognition of light. Always the balance must be maintained: night must follow day, autumn must follow summer and death must follow life...all in succession, a never-ending circle -- no beginning and no end.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 28.3px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span>[...]</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 28.3px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 28.3px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“The tendency of the mind is to create a false sense of separation. The gravity of the mind, of thoughts, beliefs and conditioning is strong and exerts a tremendous pull. But once you have touched the core of what you are, once you have tasted truth, you can never be the same again. The prison of mind will eventually, inevitably, dissolve. Now, I ask you..setting aside this illusory mask you have worn all your life, this illusory sense of being a person separate from the unity of life...what will you do now? Where do you feel your destiny lies? Answer from the heart, from the root of your existence and not through the filter of your habitual patterns of mind.”</span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 28.3px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[...]</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 28.3px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-indent: 28.3px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">She now had to take a leap of faith. She vowed to deal with whatever lay ahead of her while endeavouring to retain the knowledge, awareness and understanding she now possessed regarding her true nature and the inherent oneness of life. All of the dramas were but expressions in an infinite play of the primordial essence. </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">She</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> was what lay behind, beneath and beyond the outer manifestations. On this level, she was invincible, invulnerable and could transcend whatever came her way. She was beyond the happenings and events of life. She </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">was</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> life.</span></span></span></p>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-66719317520913909252011-05-16T18:43:00.003+01:002011-05-16T18:53:09.683+01:00The Useless Tree<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg63ErfEzn1oFOykFXet9MJ-Yk_lViWWSMaOl8801IzOEh-wUMxAkfGFq1W2F7OlrFolGPZVYkDfcwB5jTiN2sAywCqgdGvnYkvzf8tlqDNfVBxt3BkqDObFj7syM_QgZWiZDtc/s1600/4Apr101.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg63ErfEzn1oFOykFXet9MJ-Yk_lViWWSMaOl8801IzOEh-wUMxAkfGFq1W2F7OlrFolGPZVYkDfcwB5jTiN2sAywCqgdGvnYkvzf8tlqDNfVBxt3BkqDObFj7syM_QgZWiZDtc/s320/4Apr101.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5607373393848298066" /></a><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">From </span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Chuang Tzu - The Inner Chapters, the Classic Taoist Text</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> translated by Solala Towler. Not sure why this struck me so much but it did. I guess I'm a useless tree myself!</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">“Once a master carpenter named Shih was travelling with his apprentice on his way to the state of Chi. When they arrived in Chu Yuan village they passed a huge old oak tree sheltering the village shrine. It was huge, large enough to fit several thousand oxen under its branches. It was 100 spans and towered over everything else in the village with its lowest branches a full 80 feet in the air. These branches were so large they could have been made into a dozen boats. Many people were standing under it, their necks craned as they tried to see the top. But the master carpenter did not even turn his head as they passed it; but walked on without stoping for a moment.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">His apprentice took one look at the immense tree and ran after his master saying: “Since I first took up the ax to train with you Master, I have never seen a tree as magnificent. Yet you do not even look at it, much less stop. Why is this?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The carpenter said, “Enough! Not another word about this tree! Its wood is useless. A boat made from its timber would sink; a coffin would rot before you could put it into the ground; any tool you made from it would snap. It has too much sap in it to make a door, and a beam made from its wood would be full of termites. Altogether it is a completely useless tree and that is why it has lived so long.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">One night, after he returned home, the ancient tree came to the carpenter in a dream and spoke to him. “What are you comparing me too,” it asked, “useful trees like cherry, apple, pear, orange, citron and all the other useful trees? Yet for these trees, as soon as the fruit is ripe they are stripped; their branches are broken and torn off. It is their usefulness that causes them so much abuse. Instead of living out the years heaven has given them they are cut off halfway through. So it is for living things. This is why I have worked so long to cultivate the spirit of uselessness. I was almost cut down several times but I have been able to attain a great level of uselessness and this has been very useful to me. If I had been more useful I would never have attained the great age that I have, and grown so large.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">“The two of us are similar. We are both just beings in the world. How is it that we go about judging other beings? You, an old and worthless man, about to die, how can you judge me and call me worthless?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Shih the carpenter awoke then and spent a long time lying in his bed trying to understand this strange dream. Later, when he shared his dream with his apprentice the young man said, “If this ancient tree is so interested in being useless why has it allowed itself to become part of the village shrine?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">His master said, “It is only pretending to be a shrine. It is its way of protecting itself. Even though its timber is useless, if it were not a shrine it would have been cut down long ago. It is totally different from other trees. You cannot hope to understand it!”</span></span></span></p>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-12449349037344898562011-03-16T17:33:00.000+00:002011-03-16T17:34:21.807+00:00Surrendering to life - 1<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The word 'surrender' has bad connotations in our culture. It's equated with defeat, weakness and failure. So much so that we probably need a whole other word for 'surrender' as it's meant in the context of spirituality. This form of surrender has nothing to do with defeat and failure and is actually more synonymous with strength than weakness. It takes a lot of strength and wisdom to know when and how to surrender to life.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Eckhart Tolle defined this form of surrender as simply "yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life." The Tao te Ching is an extended meditation on the art of surrendering to the flow of life. It draws our attention to the inherent perfection of nature, which is driven by an inner force, an underlying principle of balance and harmony. The sun and the wind and rain just do their thing. Animals exist, just doing their thing. In spite of the seeming chaos and violence we might observe in the natural world when viewing its constituent parts and their interaction, when the whole is taken into consideration, we see it is all driven by balance and perfection. Whenever it resists and constricts, something usually happens to bring it back into balance again.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">We are not separate from nature or from the natural world. Only the human ego would assume otherwise. And so our lives are really meant to flow in perpetual balance as much as anything in the natural world. This balance is lost the moment our egos interject the notion of 'doership'. Doership revolves around a sense that “I” am living “my life” and “I” am the creative force behind everything that happens in it. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Now, we can shape our lives and destinies to an extent. But it is limited and in our overwhelmingly individualistic, 'power to self' kind of culture, it is greatly overemphasised. We lose touch with the underlying balance of life because when we think that we're the one doing everything, that we have to control and direct every single part of lives. If things go the way we want them to go, we're happy. If things don't conform to our idea of what they should be, we're unhappy.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">From an early age we learn that if we manipulate situations in certain way we can get results that are favourable to us and there's nothing wrong with that. Until, that is, it gets out of hand and before we know it we're in a megalomaniacal relationship with life. We become the ultimate dictators. Instead of flowing with life, life has become something separate that we need to endlessly control and manipulate. As a result we're perpetually at war with life.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I believe this is at the root of much of our suffering. We devote years of our lives and exhaustive effort to manipulating life into what we want it to be. Sometimes it works, but often it doesn't...and when it doesn't, we suffer. No matter how much we fret and struggle and strive, life is ultimately going to get its own way: we're going to grow old and die. It's a shattering realisation that when it comes down to the war between us and life, life is ultimately going to emerge victorious. So why fight?</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Surrender is acknowledging that there's a deeper flow, a deeper reality beneath the myriad forms of this world which have hitherto absorbed and imprisoned our attention. It's only when we let go of our need to control everything and recognise that our reign as supreme dictator of our lives has caused more pain than gain, that we can begin to form a deeper connection with life.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Contrary to everything we may have been taught, accepting and yielding to the flow of life gives us infinitely more power than trying to control and manipulate every aspect of it. The latter wears us out, grinds us down, tending to make us bitter and disillusioned. The former makes us as fresh and innocent as a young child; we regain some of our wonder at the miraculous gift of life. We connect with a far deeper power and come to experience a profound joy at simply being alive and open to life as it unfolds.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; min-height: 15.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It's also possible that when we approach life from an attitude of surrender and acceptance that situations become more harmonious, because we're no longer creating tension and constriction by trying to control everything. Letting go of our stranglehold on life frees up a whole lot of energy that was otherwise being wasted. Perhaps if we are a little friendlier and kinder to life, life will return the favour? Why not surrender to the flow of life and just see what happens...</span></span></span></p>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-81424611073819076452011-03-14T13:17:00.000+00:002011-03-14T13:18:01.777+00:00What do we do (or not do) when the world is going crazy?<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande'; font-size: small; ">These are without doubt turbulent and deeply uncertain times. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Just days ago Japan was hit by one of the biggest earthquakes and tsunamis in recorded history, leaving the world in a state of shock. The devastation sadly continues as I write this. This is not an isolated blip either: in the past few years extreme weather and geological instability has increased exponentially. Apparently between 2006 and the end of 2010 there has been a 75% increase in earthquakes, and a similar increase in volcanic activity as well.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And it's not just the planet that's in turmoil - it's the people living upon it as well. In the past few weeks both Tunisia and Egypt have undergone revolutions, with deeply revolutionary unrest continuing in Libya and other parts of the middle east. The rest of the world has not been immune to this revolutionary fervour either, with civil unrest even in comparatively stable countries such as the UK, USA and Ireland.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So what do we do when the world around us is in a state of chaos?</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It's normal and natural to react to a terrible occurrence with a measure of shock. Our reactions and the pain we feel motivates us to take action and do what needs to be done. However, problems can set in when we get caught in a kind of feedback loop. This is something the media tends to cause and exacerbate and I feel it's unhealthy and destructive.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">When something bad happens, it's best to avoid doing what the majority of people do. It's almost as though people are programmed to respond to chaos in a certain way. They stay glued to the news, which continually feeds images of devastation, violence and heartbreak. This feeds the cloud of despair and shock that almost tangibly hangs in the air, getting larger and larger the more it's 'fed'. People also like to talk with others about how terrible the situation is...which, it may indeed be. The suffering and devastation is indeed heartbreaking and it's necessary to acknolwedge and witness the feelings it brings up in us.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">But I also feel we have to pull ourselves out of our knee-jerk reactions of shock, despair and fear and recalibrate ourselves. Instead of continually fixating on images of the outward dissolution and disintegration of form (which was always so incredibly fragile and fleeting in spite of its illusion of solidity), we can instead turn our attention inward and seek that which is beyond form...that which can never be harmed or diminished in any way. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">When the world around us is crumbling, we must go within and find our centre. The importance of doing this cannot be overstated. It's not something that comes naturally to the vast majority of people - it's something we have to consciously do.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This formless background upon which the ephemeral objects of this world come and go is eternal, untouchable and ungraspable and yet it's there if only we take a moment to connect with it. For want of a better term, I'll call it the Tao. It is the source of this world; the page upon which the words of this world are written, the very space which allows objects to exist.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">There are many different pointers to help one discover and reconnect with this inner vastness. Some people find that quieting the perpetual chatter of the mind allows them to access this state of inner stillness and aliveness. I find it easiest to become aware of being aware, turning awareness toward itself, enquiring 'what am I?', 'what is it that's conscious?', 'what is it that is awake and aware at this moment?', 'what is it that's looking out of these eyes?'</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Becoming aware of what we truly are beyond the surface-level movements of mind and beyond whatever is happening in the outer world creates what has been termed 'coherence', a state that can actually now be scientifically measured. Psychological and physiological disharmony dissolve as we reconnect and anchor ourselves in this inner reservoir of awareness/peace/being and we are automatically centred, strengthened and sustained. Coherence is catching. Peace has a habit of spreading.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The world is free to do its thing...which it's going to do anyway, whether we like it or not. From this deeper perspective we are just witnesses, observing the play of form in all its wonder and terror.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">"But wait a minute...isn't it selfish going on a bliss-trip when the planet is in chaos and people are suffering and dying?"</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">There's often an unconscious assumption that if we don't suffer along with others we're cold, heartless and unfeeling. Some people seem to feel that if we aren't constantly glued to the news, trying to glean as much information as we can about a disaster, then we're almost letting down those that are suffering. Yet if you've ever been in a crisis, you know that the people that are of the most help are those that remained balanced, centred and who don't allow the stress of the situation to sweep them into shock, panic or despair. Those reactions, though natural and understandable, have a crippling effect and are completely unhelpful. In order to help in a crisis, you must first transcend it.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Getting swept up in the chaos and trauma simply adds more chaos and trauma to the world. It creates greater disharmony and incoherence. Scientists and mystics agree that we are all interconnected and inseparable from the whole. It's therefore not unreasonable to assume that our state of being must have some kind of an effect on the whole. My personal feeling is that spending all our day focussing on devastation, conflict and violence may actually energise the disturbance and might even perpetuate or worsen the very conditions we're upset about.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If, on the other hand, we remain centred, balanced and in a state of peace (or at least acceptance), then we are emanating the qualities of peace and coherence to the whole. This can only have a positive effect. Again I am brought back to Nisargadatta's statement that we can only save the world by transcending the world.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It's likely that the geological and social/political upheaval our world is experiencing will continue. In the end it may even be necessary for our continued survival as a species. We have created and unsustainable and self-destructive system that simply has to change. We can do it the easy way or the hard way. I think the majority of people are still too deeply asleep to see the choice that's before us, so it's likely we will be forced to wake up and forced to change.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Is this nature's way of bringing us to our knees? Sometimes it takes a disaster of epic proportions to shake us out of our slumber and make us realise...heck, I'm alive! But I'm destroying myself and the planet. What do I have to do to change? The human race has never done things the easy way and alas I can't see that changing anytime soon.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Ultimately it's all just a process. From the perspective of the Tao, the world of form and objects comes and goes...things happen, then change...things happen, then change again. Good things happen, bad things happen. The Tao doesn't manipulate or cling in any way. That's not to say it's cold and aloof, for it is intimately connected with everything. It embraces the entirety, the whole, with wide open arms, judging nothing. (How can it judge? All is part of the overall process and no seemingly separate component can be judged on its own merit).</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I feel we are being invited to do the same. Find the Tao within yourself and surrender to it. Let it live through you. Let it observe, with an open mind and open heart, doing what it can when it can, allowing, witnessing, being. By finding the stillness within and embodying and BEING that stillness, we give a tremendous gift to this world. It is a gift of transcendence and transformation.</span></span></div>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-68422239642007308562011-02-11T14:40:00.004+00:002011-02-12T15:34:05.364+00:00We can't help the world until we've transcended it<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color:#010033;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The news is one of the most potent and toxic drugs known to man and it’s available on tap, twenty-four hours a day. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color:#010033;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I find that just thirty seconds of it is enough to send me on a seriously bad trip. I end up in a state of lamentation at the apparently woeful state of the world. Most of our problems clearly stem from widespread and pervasive human dysfunction and all its symptoms, from the dubious activities of governments abroad and at home to the machinations of the monstrous corporate machine and our ongoing decimation of the natural world. Once you get onto this particular train of thought it’s very difficult to get off it again...and it almost always ends in a crash.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color:#010033;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">But get off the train we must. As long as we’re wrapped up in the problems, we’re part of the problem. I strongly feel that whatever the problem, transcendence is the answer. We can only help the world by shifting our perspective from appearance to reality, from symptom to cause and from problem to solution. Only by inviting, adopting and embodying a different level of consciousness or awareness can we be of any use to the world whatsoever. Only then do we stop being part of the problem.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color:#010033;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">This topic is really based around a quotation by the great Nisargadatta Maharaj, an Indian sage who had truly a wonderful way of cutting through the crap and getting to the essential truth of life. The question has to do with our “preoccupation with the disastrous condition of the world and the urgent need of setting it right.”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color:#010033;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Nisargadatta had this to say: “Striving for the improvement of the world is a most praiseworthy occupation. Done selflessly, it clarifies the mind and purifies the heart. But soon man will realise he pursues a mirage. Local and temporary improvement is always possible and was achieved again and again under the influence of a great king or teacher; but it would soon come to an end, leaving humanity in a new cycle of misery. It is the nature of all manifestation that the good and the bad follow each other in equal measure. The true refuge is only in the unmanifested. [...]</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color:#010033;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">“The only way to renewal lies through destruction. You must melt down the old jewellery into formless gold before you can mould a new piece. <b>Only people who have gone beyond the world can change the world. It never happened otherwise. The few whose impact was lasting were all knowers of reality. Reach their level and then only talk of helping the world.</b>”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color:#010033;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">When we get lost in the woes of the world and enraged by the inhumanity of man, we simply end up causing more suffering. In another statement Nisargadatta stated even more plainly: “The world doesn’t need to be saved by you. It needs to be saved from you.” Ouch. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color:#010033;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Einstein once observed that it’s impossible to solve a problem using the same level of consciousness that created it. When I get upset and frustrated by the state of the world (which is ultimately but a representation in my consciousness), I’m giving absolute importance and reality to something which only has relative importance and at the deepest level, arguably little in the way of ‘reality’. When I get caught up in the content of the dream, I tend to forget that it’s a dream. This is not to debate or diminish the fact that there’s a great deal of suffering in the world, because unquestionably there is.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color:#010033;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Some sages and masters are content to simply sit back and allow the world to go by, feeling no need to intervene or change it in any way. Such a laissez-faire attitude to the suffering of the world may seem unconscionable to some. I can understand it, although I don’t think I could quite be like that. When I see someone suffer, I feel deeply compelled to help. When a cause feels important to me, I act on it. I sign petitions, raise awareness and when I can make charitable donations. Just because it feels right to me on some level.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color:#010033;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Yet I now realise that I must also simultaneously remain grounded in the deeper Reality. The deeper Reality has a transcendent quality: pain and suffering tend to melt away when I remain connected with that inner expansiveness that exists beyond thought and conditioning. An inner attitude of acceptance and transcendence overcomes resistance, enabling solutions to come more easily and generally making situations flow more easily. By retaining conscious awareness of what is Real and what is simply dreamstuff, we access a power far greater than the anguished fretting of the ego-mind.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color:#010033;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Whenever we’re having a bad dream we have two options: we can try to change the dream, or we can wake up. Both options require a degree of lucidity and the realisation that what we are experiencing is a dream. We can actively work to change the dream and make it more pleasant, or we can sit back and just allow it to unfold with an attitude of curiosity, knowing that it is finite and will end in due course. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color:#010033;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I’d imagine that most people would probably opt to improve the dream in some way. Again, this necessitates the awareness that you are the dreamer. You can’t change the dream from within the dream until you recognise that it is just a dream. Until you reach that point, you’re simply too immersed in it: you’re unconscious in every sense of the world. Your actions within the dream are scripted. To awaken in life is to awaken within the dream, to realise what’s going on and to make your choice -- consciously change the dream to something better, or else sit back and enjoy the ride regardless of what happens.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color:#010033;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It would seem that our very belief that there’s anything ‘wrong’ with the world highlights a deeply dualistic mode of thinking. Only the mind can create ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. If there’s only one underlying reality, one infinite expanse of awareness/consciousness/being, then everything is part of a deeper unified perfection. Beyond the prison of dualistic thinking, either “God” is everything or nothing at all. When we judge any aspect of reality as being ‘wrong’, then we’re waging war with the universe in its infinite perfection. We’re waging war with God. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">(I tend to balk every time I hear or use that word, but it sounded appropriate in this context!)</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color:#010033;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Again, it doesn’t mean we have to sit back and do nothing when someone needs help. We can take whatever action we feel to be right. But at the same time we realise that, on some deeper level, everything, EVERYTHING that is happening and has ever happened is born of a deeper underlying order and perfection. We can’t strip reality into component parts labelled ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Well, in fact we can and often do -- but that’s a large part of the problem. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color:#010033;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Accepting the unacceptable, trying to refrain from judging the seemingly terrible (while perhaps taking whatever action we feel to be right), contributes to greater coherence, greater peace and greater unity in the world. It’s turiya - a new mode of consciousness, still relatively uncommon in the world. And it may be the greatest healer of all.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Arial; color:#010033;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Ultimately, I don’t believe we’re of much use to the world until we become, as Nisargadatta put, “knowers of reality.” </span></span></span></p>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12506237.post-66847065898933889132010-12-15T13:55:00.002+00:002010-12-15T14:03:48.214+00:00Two Approaches to Spirituality<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR2_7p4Xeo1SOTDPc6cO8pRzYp6Ex93pmxhd6llJjh1K7LlrkWbjl2vy85mL6tFwlxOp_fuwEpUWngAg84Lts5NPbkPz0TA7wObtNzE_qvxws0PhSI65mfgFeSQt5Plk_6zs4I/s1600/10dec1aa.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR2_7p4Xeo1SOTDPc6cO8pRzYp6Ex93pmxhd6llJjh1K7LlrkWbjl2vy85mL6tFwlxOp_fuwEpUWngAg84Lts5NPbkPz0TA7wObtNzE_qvxws0PhSI65mfgFeSQt5Plk_6zs4I/s320/10dec1aa.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5550907885603897298" /></a> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 18.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Arial; color:#010033;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">“The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and to know the place for the first time.” - T.S. Eliot</span></b></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">There seem to be two main approaches to spirituality. The first and by far the most common, is the accumulative approach, in which the individual reads lots of books and acquires as much spiritual knowledge as possible, constructing exquisite new belief systems and engaging in all kinds of wonderful practises and sadhanas. There’s always some new technique and trend that’s taking the spiritual marketplace by storm, and so many exciting things to investigate and learn. This is the spiritual sweet shop and it’s a fun - and tasty - place to be.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The second approach is the de-cumulative approach and it’s a lot less common, perhaps because it’s not in the least bit flashy or enticing. By comparison it’s stark and simple. The de-cumulative approach is in some ways the polar opposite to the accumulative approach. It’s not about gaining new beliefs or adding more knowledge to the mind. It’s not about learning new techniques or becoming a better person. On this path, there are no answers out there, beyond some simple pointers that may or may not be helpful. The only prerequisite is to have a sincere yearning to find truth (truth about the nature of oneself and life) and, with an attitude of earnest inquiry, you are invited to look within and explore the truth of your existence. It’s about letting go of everything you think you’ve learned about spirituality, yourself and the world and to take a good look around in order to find the truth, first-hand, for yourself.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It took me a very long time to realise that sweet shop spirituality doesn’t really lead anywhere. It’s all about the thrill of the hunt, the perpetual mindset of seeking - and thinking you’ve found it in the latest spiritual bestseller, before realising that this wasn’t <i>quite</i> it (whatever 'it' is) and moving onto the next big trend, technique or book. I realised the answers aren’t out there, because on a fundamental level, there <i>is</i> no ‘out there’. It gradually dawned on me that world is maya, a mind-created, mind-projected and mind-sustained world of illusion and dream forms. If you want to learn about what is <i>real</i>, then you don’t look for it in the world of the false. You won’t find answers about reality in the world of dreams. Your best bet is to instead turn your attention to the consciousness that is dreaming. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">This shift in attention from dream to dreamer was a huge turning point for me. It doesn’t mean I still don’t get pulled into the dramas, crises and strife that happen around me, because I do. But it doesn’t happen for quite as long anymore. On a couple of recent occasions when there have been dramas occurring around me, and people running about freaking out, I simply found myself letting go and realising that, in spite of the panic and stress around me, the drama itself didn’t really matter and that it would quickly resolve itself as it always does. And it did, on each occasion. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The dream frequently gets rocky, for that’s what happens in dreams - one moment you’re soaring through the sky like an eagle, then the next you’re tumbling toward the ground. But when you know all along that the whole thing is just a dream, you simply observe with an almost amused detachment, knowing that the seemingly dire crises will promptly resolve themselves and that what you really are cannot be threatened in any way by any of it. Indeed, the element of lucidity while dreaming even gives you an element of being able to better control the dream itself. I tried that too, and it worked remarkably! I have a suspicion that the famed ‘law of attraction’ stuff actually does work, but that you have to be detached from the dream and from what you want to create. Only when you know yourself as dreamer and not dream can you truly utilise your creative power for crafting and altering the dream should you so choose. You have the choice as to whether you simply let go and watch the show, or whether you want to change the outcome of the dream.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Now, there will be a great many people who would vigorously oppose the assertion that the world as we experience it is a dream. It’s a pretty radical statement and one that’s very hard to explain on the level of mind. I don’t feel the need to even try to explain it at the moment (although I do feel an explanation of sorts brewing in the back of my mind, words that perhaps want to be expressed at a later date). You can’t take this on someone else’s word anyway. It’s a realisation that can only be arrived through deep and unflinching inner exploration. It’s necessary to jettison all concepts and ideas about what you think you are and what you think constitutes reality and simply look within. The invitation of self-inquiry as offered by sages such as Ramana Maharshi and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj has been, for me, the match that ignited this particular realisation. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It’s a journey that must be undertaken oneself. It’s wholly possible that others will come to different realisations and understandings of reality. The important thing is that the journey is taken earnestly, without expectation and without any other motive other than truth. Many of us, myself included, have embarked upon the spiritual path with an idea that it will bring us something wonderful, some superhuman state of enlightenment. This hidden agenda has to be ditched. When the ego uses spirituality as a crutch or a secret weapon to bolster itself...well, it’s never going to work out. It will get messy. I am certain that the ego can never become enlightened. It sure as hell thinks it can. But authentic awakening is the transcending of ego, in which the false, conceptual self dissolves into something vaster, deeper and truer. And by ‘something’ I actually mean nothing and Everything. This is where words get tricky. This is where it’s best for me to stop talking altogether.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I suppose the point of this post was to note what I see as the two contrasting approaches to spiritual realisation. The accumulating/gathering approach sees us devouring information, teachings and techniques. It may be a necessary foundation for our spiritual explorations (until we may come to realise that it’s unnecessary and even counter-productive). There comes a point when we’ve stuffed our bellies with so much confectionary that we feel bloated, sick and yet simultaneously unfulfilled. It took me many years on the spiritual merri-go-round to realise that I was just going around in circles. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It was then that I was drawn to the spartan and decidedly un-flashy approach of de-cumulation, wherein the only motive is a simple desire to know what’s true and what isn’t true. Not because of what it will get me, but simply because the confectionery shop had left me so unsatisfied and disillusioned. This fundamental shift in focus is radical. I stopped looking for answers within the dream itself, and started exploring who and what the dreamer was.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I’m beginning to realise that this ‘path’ doesn’t really lead anywhere. It does seem to cause a radical shift in perception and awareness. I don’t think I can ever look at ‘myself’ and ‘the world’ in the same way ever again. Yet I don’t think I’m suddenly going to burst into light and ascend to higher planes. This apparently separate entity with a body and name and memories and habits is here for the duration of its allotted timespan. But there’s something changing within. There’s a timeless presence or awareness that’s simply witnessing the play of form as it takes place through and around this time-bound physical entity. It’s impossible to find and touch this awareness - it’s not to be seen or categorised. It’s simply watching with a detached amusement. It’s almost like someone sitting in a darkened cinema munching on popcorn while watching what’s happening on the cinema screen. Sometimes the film is so good (or bad!) and so compelling and realistic, that the cinema-goer is utterly pulled into the events of the film. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I like the cinema screen analogy. I’ve heard it used before and it’s one of the best for explaining the nature of consciousness and life. I may return to it. In the meantime, I continue to nibble popcorn and watch this amusing, scary, funny, sometimes tragic farce unfold.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; min-height: 16.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p>Roryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206104462066902069noreply@blogger.com4