Notes and articles tagged with “awakening”
Filed under Notes on 21. April 2007 »
The essence of the delusion that we talk about here, the source of all suffering and the subject of all spiritual teachings, is the mind’s identification with form. The conditioned belief that who you are is a human body plus a bundle of labels that together make up the mind-made sense of self. And much of what we are doing when going through some form of spiritual practice is to realize this as illusion, to break free of it and gain perspective on the duality that is ‘me and myself’.
We could say that it all goes towards realizing that the mind-made sense of self is an illusion, so that we can find underneath it the one true self that had been obscured. This identification with the one true self is enlightenment, the state of peace, joy, stillness, and unconditional love that so many people are looking for. And so the purpose of spiritual teaching is to point towards that state, and to provide words and practices that are designed to trigger that realization, the shift in identification from form to the formless.
I remember hearing stories of St. Francis, and how he used to refer to his body as ‘it’. Saying it is hungry, and it is tired, instead of I’m this, and I’m that, which is the custom in our culture. And simply making this change in the way you refer to your body, replacing ‘I’m’ with ‘it’, can be a subtle way of breaking the conditioning and thus dissolving the identification with form.
A similar practice, and what the title of this note refers to, is thinking of yourself as an invisible observer instead of a person in a body. You then see yourself as an invisible entity, a ghost if you will, hovering above this particular human body all day long — looking through its eyes but simultaneously being aware that who you are is beyond the body, being in the world but not of it. The body is of the world, and so are all the thoughts, concepts, and labels that you’ve associated with it, but who you are is not of the world. And this little exercise is a pointer to that identity shift.
Another aspect of this, particularly useful if there are certain situations you are afraid of or want to avoid (think social rejection, financial ruin, etc.), is to look at the situation from the perspective of an invisible observer. You can ask yourself, “what would this situation look like if I were only there as an invisible observer?,” effectively removing your self from the mental image of the situation. If this pointer works for you, it allows you to see what the world looks like unburdened by all the conceptual baggage of the conditioned sense of self. Or at least give you a hint of what life can be like without this self, and what the world looks like without the distorting element of ego.
What would you do, and where would you go, if you could be there as an invisible observer? As an example we can take all the classic ‘self-confidence’ related issues and situations, such as asking someone out on a date, changing jobs, starting a business — whatever it is, imagine what the situation might look like if you could be there as an invisible observer. Without the fear of failure and rejection, situations that are usually seen as heavily problematic and daunting can even take on an air of playfulness. And you then see how all of life can be experienced in this playful manner, free of the heaviness that comes with being identified with, and trapped in, the mind-made sense of self.
The exercise of imagining yourself to be an invisible observer is only an intermediary stage, of course, but as you apply these kinds of pointers more and more, the shift in identity from form to the formless, from something to nothing, noise to stillness, will settle in as your natural state of being. What may begin as a silly little mental image of yourself as a ghost-like entity that hovers above and beyond the physical body, can point you towards that state of feeling deeply that you are not anything on the level of form. Which is the state of freedom, and a state of having an intuitive sense of being in the world but not of the world.
Filed under Notes on 17. February 2007 » [12]
I’ve been going through a bit of turmoil today, unease coming in seemingly from nowhere to slap me around a bit. And as this is an ongoing practice, with these old conditioned thoughts and beliefs coming up in waves again and again, I have certain methods that I use to process them. Writing in my journal, taking walks, reading books, and constantly observing and questioning the thoughts that go through the mind. And don’t think that it's nearly as elegant as it may sound; it is a backwards stumble in the dark, at best. But this is how it works, and usually after a certain amount of suffering I have a realization. Always the same, ultimately, but gradually the realization becomes deeper and deeper.
As I remember Wayne Dyer saying in one of his talks, that “when you squeeze an orange, you get orange juice. And when you are squeezed, whatever is in there is what comes out.” I’m sure he said it more elegantly, but the point is that when you are challenged, in other words when the world gives you a squeeze, whatever you have inside will come out. If you have repressed anger, it will come out in one form or the other. Maybe in a sudden flash of energy, or maybe in a slow, painful seepage (yummy metaphors here). In any case, whatever is left in you of pain and attachment to form will be beaten out of you by the challenges of the world. Or we could say that the world will keep pushing your buttons until it gets the combination right and everything blows up and disintegrates.
After hours of journaling, walking, reading, listening, etc., I finally came to a peaceful realization, during my walk, about a certain thing I had been clinging to. Generally speaking, it was the realization that I had to let go of future and thus to let go of attachment to thoughts, plans, and beliefs. To be at peace with not knowing what will happen, and to give myself up completely. Not minding what happens, as Krishnamurti put it. And as I said, this is nothing new. We’ve all read about letting go of future — this is all I ever write about, really. But it is one thing to grasp it on a conceptual level and quite another to have a deep realization, to know it as opposed to merely knowing about it. It’s amazing how resilient the mind is in clinging to its attachments and thoughts about the future, and until you really feel that you do not mind what happens there is an attachment somewhere whether you realize it or not.
Shortly after having had this realization, or rather after having entered the beginning of that realization — it is still going on slowly as I write this — I reached for my little pocket version of the Tao Te Ching and begun reading immediately where I opened it:
A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts
and keeps his mind open to what is.
What a beautiful thing it is to have no fixed plans, and to be free of the illusion of future. Not in a way that you cannot do anything, or have plans on a superficial level, but rather seeing that whatever plans you may have are utterly unimportant compared to the reality of life itself. That whatever thoughts you have about any situation could not possibly be more right than life, which is a realization that brings with it a sense of humility and gratitude. Humility that then replaces the old arrogance of believing that your thoughts and perceptions are superior to reality itself.
And when you see this, there is no need for clinging to future anymore. No need for having to figure anything out, simply because you see that it is all illusion anyway. Every thought you have about the future is nonsense.
Isn’t that great?
Filed under Articles on 16. February 2007 » [3]
When our minds are given the task of figuring out how to find happiness, the enterprise is doomed to failure from the get-go. The concept of happiness is rooted deep in our conditioning, in various states of distortion from person to person, and is the concept which carries perhaps the clearest indicator of our delusion of seeking for fulfillment in the world of form. The conditioned concept of happiness is always connected with something that happens, and is characterized by images of positive events and good fortune. It is at its core an externally derived sense of wellbeing; of feeling happy because of something that happens
Filed under Articles on 8. February 2007 »
If you were to read a transcript summary of your thinking over the course of a normal day, you might find that a lot of it centers around what you want for yourself; looking at things in terms of what’s in it for you, what you need to do in order to ensure your own comfort, how you can turn situations in your favor etc. And while you may not have many obviously self-serving thoughts, on a deeper level the general theme may still revolve around them to a certain degree
Filed under Notes on 2. February 2007 » [1]
Often when people read about spiritual awakening, finding inner peace and becoming free of suffering, they tend to feel that the solutions presented are not practical or applicable in their own lives. They may read something that they know points the way to freedom, and even have glimpses of a state of deep peace, but then fail to see how it can work in modern, everyday situations. For many the concept of ‘enlightenment’ carries with it images of old masters, temples, and monasteries; an environment that seems more conducive to spiritual practice than their own. A concept that “sounds nice, but doesn’t really work in the real world,” as if spiritual wisdom only belongs to a fantasy land far removed from our own reality.
The Tao has a verse dedicated to this, which goes:
Some say that my teaching is nonsense.
Others call it lofty but impractical.
But to those who have looked inside themselves,
this nonsense makes perfect sense.
And to those who put it into practice,
this loftiness has roots that go deep.
Much of the confusion, and the inability to see the teaching in context with what we perceive to be reality, has to do with thinking that our problems are much too complicated for such simple advice. Our social conditioning teaches us that reality is complex, difficult, and devoid of wonder — that the simple world we saw as children was an illusion, and that growing up is a process of disillusionment rather than the other way around. We also tend to think that spiritual awakening comes at the cost of losing touch with reality, and that being enlightened is to have separated yourself from the effects of the so-called real world.
These beliefs need to be questioned, and if you ever feel that a spiritual teaching sounds nice but impractical, ask yourself, in the words of Byron Katie, “honey, is that true?”
Filed under Articles on 7. January 2007 » [5]
Although it may sound like the title of an article from Cosmo Girl magazine, except for the last part perhaps, issues having to do with our parents are not limited to the lives of children and adolescents only. Even if you are in your 50s, 60s, or even 90 years old, the fundamental beliefs you have about yourself and the world can probably be traced back to what you were taught to believe as a child. Growing up, our whole picture of the world is limited to our immediate environment, and so the way in which a child perceives the world is heavily dependent on the outlook of its parents, siblings, and relatives
Filed under Articles on 13. December 2006 » [2]
I was out walking the other night, Chopin playing in my headphones and a crisp sort of winter stillness in the air. And despite the peaceful ambiance I was experiencing a hangover after a bit of binge-thinking earlier that day. The sort of thought trajectory that starts out when something great happens and opens up a flood of positive thinking; a thought stream that then gathers momentum and ultimately turns negative, as all unattended thought does eventually when left to proliferate
Filed under Articles on 4. December 2006 »
In the normal state of consciousness, it can be said that our attention is almost continuously occupied with form. Thoughts, objects, situations, and externally derived sense experience, leave us almost no room at all for looking within and being aware of that which is beyond form. If we were to look at life in terms of balance between inner and outer, the formless and form, the habitual ratio between the two is almost always in favor of the outer; something like 95% things, thoughts, and noise, 5% stillness and peace
Filed under Articles on 1. December 2006 »
So, yes, hello, and welcome to Everyday Wonderland. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to write the first post on a brand new weblog, but I’ll start off with telling you about what Everyday Wonderland is and how it came about …
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.