Filed under Notes on 11. August 2007 »
See if this sounds familiar: “My life is problematic right now, but if ______ then I would be okay.” Mostly the blank space is filled with something to do with externally derived security, such as financial independence, a happy marriage, a solid career, a nicer house, and so on and so on. And no matter how often people get over that bump in the road, the initial feeling of safety and relaxation is soon replaced by the need for just this one more thing. And however many problems we manage to solve or stomp into the ground, it’s a game of endless whack-a-mole.
In essence, we are looking for home in our external situation; looking for inner peace in outer circumstances. And the reason for this is that we believe that inner peace, that elusive feeling of being safe, of having arrived, etc., can be derived somehow from the world of form. Furthermore we think that not only can it be derived from external circumstances, but that it depends on the external circumstances of our lives. In the conditioned and unconscious state most people still find themselves in, all they see is the world of form and so they simply cannot fathom where else to look. It is a case of only perceiving the surface level of life, and looking for fulfillment there while completely missing the vastness of depth beyond. It’s like picking up a single piece from a 1.000.000 piece puzzle, expecting it to show you the entire picture. You look real hard at it for years and years, tilt it this way and that, bang your head against it in frustration, and then pass on to the next generation that “yes, the picture is there, but you have to look really hard to see it.”
We’ve been conditioned to think that the surface is all there is, that the world of form is life itself in completion, and a side effect of that is the essence of human suffering, the problem behind all our problems; namely, our identification with form. When we are identified with form, our appetite for more forms is bottomless. It is a philosophy that assumes we are incomplete, and yet doesn’t have any real idea about what completion is. A feeling of lack and incompleteness is at the core of the illusion of form identity, and so merely feeding the appetite for more is an exercise in futility. On that level, there will never be enough. We can never find permanent satisfaction on the level of form, mostly because the satisfaction of our needs on that level is illusory. Any externally derived sense of safety is an illusion; we think for a moment that there really is permanence to be found in the world, until something changes or the feeling wears off. It’s like thinking that a really big hamburger is all you need to never be hungry again. Naive, sure, but this is what our conditioning is like.
Whatever problems you have in your external situation at the moment, they are neither better nor worse than any other problems that have or can ever come up in your life. On the surface level, this problem is worse and more complicated than that problem, but the differences are only relative to that level. If the surface level is 1% and the problems on that level scale from 1-10, even a level 10 problem will never exceed 1% of the totality.
When you perceive the surface level of life in context with the totality, it becomes very clear that nothing on that level can ever fulfill you. And with that comes the recognition that nothing that can ever happen on that level is all that serious. There are challenges, and when they are seen for what they are, instead of being turned into problems by the form-identified mind, you can deal with them easily and without effort. Challenges arise continuously on the surface level of life, but these only become an issue when the surface level is seen as all there is.
So whatever your current external situation looks like at the moment, realize that it will keep changing, shifting, doing its thing, and that none of it has anything much to do with your sense of fulfillment or inner peace.
Paraphrasing J. Krishnamurti, freedom from the world is not minding what happens.
Filed under Notes on 2. August 2007 » [1]
A big part of the reason why we get lost in the world of form again and again, get caught up in the stream of thinking and occupy all our attention with the things and happenings of the world, is that we believe on some level that there is something in it of lasting value. If we didn’t think the world could save us, if we didn’t believe so deeply that there is permanent security to be found in the world of form, we would not give it so much of our attention.
For example; when there is something on the horizon in your life situation that you either want desperately to avoid or to acquire, in essence if there is a possibility of a future event with high stakes of some kind, a situation of gain or loss, the mind goes hyper with trying to do something about it. If there is something you want to avoid, the mind will either focus on it almost constantly, reasoning that remembering it gives you a certain level of control over the situation; or the mind will resort to boredom, which is little more than a tactic to cover up thoughts you want to avoid rising to the surface.
Behind the stream of compulsive thinking that goes on in most people’s minds, day in and day out, is a deep seated belief that the thinking is a way of staying in control. That if you were to stop, everything would collapse around you and all your problems would grow out of control. Also in this belief is that by maintaining the stream of thinking, you are somehow more likely to arrive, or make it. Because the conditioned mind-made self is based entirely on identification with form, which always comes down to thought forms, it thrives on thinking. On a day-to-day level, this is reflected in thought patterns that revolve around staying competitive. Thinking that you gain an advantage by thinking a lot, preparing everything in advance, trying to solve every possible future situation you are likely to encounter, etc. — this form identified entity, the ego, believes that your survival depends entirely on the world of form being arranged in a certain way. To this entity, the world of form is all there is. And in this way, a situation of potential gain and loss becomes a matter of life and death. This delusion is then reflected in everything you do as long as you are identified with the ego.
When you realize that who you are is not the mind-made sense of self, your sense of proportion changes dramatically. The world of form will start to seem relatively insignificant compared to the vastness of being, or whatever you wish to call it. The world of form becomes like a small piece of driftwood floating in the middle of the Atlantic ocean; beautiful and interesting, but relatively insignificant compared to the vastness of the open sea all around it.
With this realization, the mind goes quiet. Because when the world is seen in relation to the formless, nothing that happens in it can matter all that much. It is still honored and given some attention, but the fear that drove compulsive thinking and future-projection isn’t there anymore.
The challenge, then, is to maintain that perspective. And this is easier said than done, particularly when there are so many things competing for your attention. But with every realization, your level of awareness will rise and you will become more firmly rooted in that place where you see the world for what it is.
There are some useful pointers and practices that can be used to directly bring about this shift in perspective, and in particular I am fond of using what I’ve called the 95/5. Basically it is a sort of mantra that says the world of form is only ever 5% of your total awareness, and the 95% is formless, empty space. It’s not something that can be summed up with numbers, of course, but they can help to reset your sense of perspective.
As a reminder of this, the desktop wallpaper on my computer has a visual representation of the proportions, with a colored stripe taking up 5% of an otherwise black canvas. You can download it here if you want, in size 1440 by 900 pixels.
Filed under Notes on 22. July 2007 »
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.
Filed under Notes on 19. July 2007 » [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.
Filed under Notes on 8. July 2007 »
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.
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Everyday Wonderland is a weblog on the subject of spiritual awakening, creativity, enthusiasm, inspiration, and generally everything having to do with the higher levels of human consciousness. The author is Helgi Páll Einarsson, 24 years old and currently living in Iceland. He likes books in the morning, making things, and taking long walks.