Speaking without effort

Filed under Notes on 22. July 2007 » Comments

For a long time I’ve been attracted to the idea of not speaking, of simply giving up talking completely. Becoming mute. In this way, I imagine that it would be easier to stay centered and at peace, and to not get sucked into the conditioned ways of perception and behavior that seem to be kept going in such a large part by incessant talking. The conditioning perpetuates itself in the mind through compulsive thinking, mostly repetitive and unnecessary but absolutely vital for the ego to maintain its momentum. This compulsive thinking can manifest outwardly in constant talking and chatter, which means that people will try to keep the dialogue going either by talking to themselves in the head or by talking to someone else, regardless of whether or not anything needs to be said.

Now, I’m not suggesting that everyone should start behaving like robots and talk to each other for utilitarian purposes only. Not at all. Most people enjoy talking, and there is nothing inherently wrong with it. What we are looking at here does not necessarily mean that we need to stop talking, but rather that we investigate where the words are coming from.

Ironically enough I’m having a hard time finding the words for this, but it has to do with the concept of non-doing and the difference between a thought that comes as a result of an act of thinking, and a thought that comes from somewhere else, often described as intuition. Another way of seeing it is to split the mind into higher mind and lower mind, the higher being the realm of inspiration, intuition and creativity, while the lower is home to conditioning, compulsive thinking and the ego.

As talking is little more than outwardly expressing verbalized thoughts, the same split of higher and lower mind applies. Sometimes you speak through the conditioned mind, and sometimes speaking simply happens without you having to make an effort. It is the same with thinking or taking action; there is a great difference between an action that happens intuitively and an action that arises from personal effort.

When I contemplate the possibility of ceasing to speak, what I really mean is to cease speaking from the level of conditioning. To let go of the act of speaking and simply allow words to come if and when they are needed. This means among other things that you no longer prepare what you are going to say, but rest assured that whatever comes spontaneously and from intuition is going to be far better and more appropriate than what you could ever muster with effort and preparation.

It is an approach that has much deeper implications and goes far beyond talking alone, but applying it in this one area of doing will have a direct effect on how you do everything else. The idea of non-action is, as I take it to be, to stop acting on behalf of the person and instead surrendering to the will of God or, if you don’t like that word, giving yourself up to the service of life itself.

Talking (and consequently thinking) is a great area to experiment with this idea of non-action, and the simple practice of not making an effort to talk can reap great benefits in other areas of your life as well.

A ball of junk

Filed under Notes on 19. July 2007 » Comments [7]

There is a Japanese video game I remember from a while back, called We Love Katamari, where the objective is, if I recall correctly, to roll an adhesive ball through a stage attempting to pick up everything that will stick to it. So at the end of a level you will want to have accumulated as many objects as possible onto the ball; basically, the bigger the ball of stuff the better.

Sounds familiar? It should, because this closely resembles the game of life. Not real life, of course, but the illusory game of gain and loss that one plays as the personal self. A game where accumulating more and more forms is the only objective, almost regardless of what those forms actually are. More is better.

The personal self, then, is like a ball of junk. It identifies with form, and the built-in survival mechanism cares about nothing other than accumulating more and more things. If I am the sum of the things in my ball of junk, then maintaining and preferably growing that ball is crucial to my survival. In this game, the ultimate objective is to accumulate enough things onto the ball of junk so that you can finally retire from the game. Arriving or making it in the game is to have gained a ball of junk large and substantial enough to sustain you for the rest of your life.

Now, let’s imagine that the core of this ball is illuminated. The light shining from the core is life, or God, or your true Self, whatever you want to call it. It is the essence of life itself, and it is you. When a human being is born, there is little or no junk stuck to the ball and so the light shines through very easily. Look into the eyes of a 1yr old baby and you see radiant light, but fast forward 40 years when that baby is a fast track corporate executive with a stock portfolio and twelve meetings before noon — the light may be there, but most likely it has dimmed considerably over years and years of covering it up with junk. There may be glimpses here and there, a glint or two during a game of golf or whatever, but not much.

The spiritual path is the shedding of this accumulation of junk. And it’s simple; letting go of things is technically easier than picking them up. But it is as difficult as it is simple, because our conditioning teaches us that gaining is good and losing is bad. And that our survival depends on having a sufficient inventory of objects. If you have an object in your hand, dropping it is technically easier than picking up another one, but the difficulty lies in having been told that “whatever you do, don’t drop that object. If you run out of objects, you die.” And so even if simply letting go of the object is the key to liberation, we decide to hold onto it just in case, and then maybe pick up another one just to be safe.

These objects are not necessarily material objects, like luxury items or property of some kind; ultimately it always comes down to the thought form associated with the material object, and so accumulating junk is not limited to what you see on the surface. Your ball of junk may not have sports cars and jewelry, but instead of those things you may have accumulated thought forms and images of how sophisticated and advanced you are for not having sports cars and jewelry. Instead of identifying with the car, you identify with being someone who has gone beyond needing to identify with cars. Which of course implies that you are a greater person because of it.

Seeing this distinction between a material object and the thought form associated with it is fundamental in learning how to let go of the junk. It is not an exercise in selling all your material belongings and renouncing your name — the surface manifestation is secondary, but the important thing is to let go of attachment and identification with the thought forms. The ball of junk is not populated with material things, but with thoughts about material things. And so in this shedding of junk, what you are actually letting go of are conditioned thoughts and beliefs.

Letting go of the junk is simple, and the only thing keeping you from it is the conditioned habit of giving more value to the junk than that which it obscures, namely life itself.

Two ways of being unhappy

Filed under Notes on 8. July 2007 » Comments

There is a saying I’ve quoted before that goes: “There are two ways of being unhappy; not getting what you want, and getting what you want.” And although we are conditioned to believe that if we only get what we want — just this one thing and then I’ll be fine — we’ll be happy, finally and fully contented, it never seems to work out that way. It’s easy to make it seem that it does, and we do a great job of maintaining the illusion through movies, television, magazines and other forms of media, worshipping that proverbial golden calf of our age; the image of making it.

The belief in how the world of form can provide us with lasting security and salvation is very deeply rooted, which is why we cling to it no matter how many opportunities we are given to see beyond the illusion of it. It’s the reasoning that goes, “I know money and fame won’t make me happy, but I’d rather be rich, famous and unhappy than just plain unhappy.” Meaning that on one level you see the truth, but still deeper down there is the belief that you would feel more secure if you only had a little bit more.

What is commonly thought to be the formula for happiness, written in stone in the cult of society, is that getting what you want increases your overall level of contentment. Which would mean that those who get everything they want are continuously happy and fulfilled. Fairly simple, and very familiar, but if we let go of the fantasy for a moment and actually question it, we see that it is also utterly false.

The thing is, always getting what you want on the external level is potentially a path to more misery and suffering than anyone would suspect. We think that not having your wishes fulfilled brings suffering, and that is certainly how it seems on the surface, but when we look deeper we see that the suffering brought on by material excess is of a much deeper variety. Always having your wishes fulfilled leads you to rely on the world of form for your fulfillment. We all have as part of our conditioning the seeds of worldly desire, and having this desire fulfilled and catered to only works to increase the need for more. The nature of desire is that it cannot be fulfilled, and so no matter how much you gain, the void will only seem to get bigger and bigger.

The reason for why the suffering of excess is so much deeper than that of lack is that the more you have on the external level, the more it pulls you in. When you have very little, more of your attention is retained within, the only place fulfillment can be found, whereas when you have a lot, you are much more likely to be distracted and occupied exclusively with the external world. When we only pay attention to the surface, the glittering 1% that makes up the world of form, we lose touch with the other 99% of life which is to be found in that which is beyond form. It is a kind of spiritual starvation, and those who are sensitive to it will often feel exhausted and lifeless after a while of being lost on the surface.

Ultimately it is not a matter of the particular forms around us or whether or not we get what we want, but rather the level of our attachment to it. Due to the nature of our conditioning, those who have all their worldly wishes fulfilled are at a disadvantage when it comes to this, but then again the deep form of suffering they encounter brings with it a tremendous potential for awakening. And it is usually at the extremes of lack and excess that the suffering is the most intense. Being somewhere in the middle like most of us are, the pressure of either material lack or excess never really gets intense enough in either direction to make us suffer properly. There are nibbles of promise here and there, enough to keep us clinging to the illusion but not enough so that it starts eating its own tail.

For those that are in the middle, being pushed around by the world but not enough in either direction to make a lasting impression, vigilance is needed to maintain perspective. As an experiment, observe what it feels like when you get what you want, and when you don’t get what you want. What may surprise you is that the feeling can often be inverse to what you would expect; gaining something on the level of form can sometimes feel empty, tense and even vaguely stressful, while being let down by the world can feel peaceful and good. This is usually covered up with conditioned responses and mental commentary, and breaking through it simply by paying attention could significantly alter your relationship to the world, realizing that your feeling of contentment has nothing at all to do with gain or loss on the level of form.