A sense of proportion

Filed under Notes on 2. August 2007 »

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.