Notes and articles tagged with “inner-peace”
Filed under Notes on 23. June 2008 » [1]
It’s ironic that in the effort to seek and maintain your own comfort, you are never able to relax or be truly comfortable. You give up the inner peace that is your natural state in favor of trying to derive that sense of inner peace from some external situation. So instead of resting in the inherent comfort of your own being, you look for a comfortable situation out there.
When you realize this, it seems utterly insane that we keep falling into this trap. That we’re really that lost. But we are. From an early age we are taught to look outside for comfort, and almost everything in our culture encourages it.
At the root of this search for your own comfort is the illusion of self, the ego. It’s a self-serving pattern of thought that makes you look at everything in the world in terms of how it affects you and your state of comfort. And because it’s based in the illusion of self, it is loaded with fear and suffering.
The illusion is that you will become free of the fear and suffering by gaining external comfort, but the truth is that the suffering is inherent in the search itself and has nothing to do with your situation as such. If you are in suffering and then suddenly win lots of money in the lottery and feel better, your comfort is based in the illusion that it is derived from an external situation. And it is only a matter of time before the effects of that illusion start to fade.
In thinking that inner peace and comfort can be derived from an external situation, you’ve separated yourself from that peace. And you then believe yourself to live in a cruel and unfair world where true comfort is only available to a select few who make it; a world that can give you, and therefore deprive you of, inner peace.
The exercise of simply disregarding your own comfort can help you see through the conditioning, because the illusion of ego relies on constant self-interested mental activity to maintain momentum.
It is truly an amazing realization that in order to find true comfort and relaxation, you must give up concern for your own comfort.
Filed under Notes on 7. September 2007 » [7]
We could say that every individual human being lives in a world of their own, so to speak. Some people live in a world where a tree is just unprocessed timber, others where a tree is a tree, and yet others where a tree is just some mysterious thing that grows out of the ground and comes alive in the wind. Some people live in a battlefield, others in a field of flowers; some live in rain and thunder, others in the sun.
Most people you will meet are to some degree lost in their own version of social conditioning and form identity; they see the world from the perspective of an ego. Some of these world views are nicer than others, but all have in common that they are built on a foundation of fear.
One reason why human communication is such a challenge, especially on the spiritual path, is that you tend to get drawn into other people’s worlds when interacting with them. If you live with someone who is intensely fearful, for example, someone who inhabits the ego’s world of war and terror, that fear will resonate with whatever remains of that fear in you. It may be years since you left that world, but it hasn’t quite left you yet. And so whenever you interact with someone who is basically quivering in the trenches, while you are in relative peace and quiet, it pulls you in and amplifies your own fear.
If you ever have the feeling that you are somehow scattered, as opposed to centered, if you know what I mean, this may be because you are in other people’s worlds. Playing a character in other people’s worlds. Either because they pull you in, or because you have an investment of some kind, like wanting to control or influence them. If you want to impress somebody for example, want someone to think highly of you, you’ve already entered into his or her world. If you have an attachment to the opinion of five different people, you’ve scattered yourself across six different worlds; yours and theirs.
Sounds strange? Probably does, but this is difficult to put into words. I recall Byron Katie talking about this as being in other people’s business; when you want to control what somebody thinks, which is to say when you want to impress someone, you are in their business. Your thoughts are your business, and other people’s thoughts are their business.
In this sense, you only need to be concerned with your own world. Inhabit a world of peace, and simply refuse to join others on the battlefield. This seems selfish at first glance, but in reality there is no greater service you can provide to another human being than to stay firmly put in your own world. Joining others in suffering may seem charitable and compassionate, but offering them the opportunity to join you in heaven is by far preferable to joining them in hell.
And although it helps to think of it as your own personal world of peace, for the sake of it being an effective pointer, there is nothing at all personal about it. We could say that there are two worlds, let’s call them heaven and hell, and most people are still experiencing some version of the latter. It is your purpose to reside in heaven, simple as that. Inhabiting a world of peace and beauty is the purpose of life, or at least that’s one way of putting it. And to this end, using the pointer of multiple personal worlds can be helpful, especially when you are interacting with other people to avoid being pulled out of your own world, so to speak.
Ultimately though, everyone is in heaven already. Only some are under the illusion that it is hell, and behave accordingly.
Filed under Notes on 16. August 2007 »
Earlier this week I got an email from a reader regarding the post External circumstances and inner peace, asking for clarification on some of the concepts having to do with seeing the world of form as only the surface level of being. And believe me, I can see how these ideas can get confusing. They sound far-fetched, and I don’t really have a logical understanding of them as such, but they work very well for me as pointers none the less.
Ultimately they are only words, of course, and no words or concepts can ever really capture the truth; they can only point beyond themselves. The concepts can be contradictory, illogical, weird, and still fulfill the function of pointing you towards that which cannot be put into words directly.
And so the key to being able to use them is to not get hung up on trying to make sense of the concepts on the level of thinking and reason, but rather allowing them to sink in and do their work. In many cases, something you read today that makes no sense to you whatsoever may later hit you in a sudden flash of insight. Truth is beyond reason, and yet blindingly simple and obvious when you see it.
Following is the question and then the answer I gave in the email:
"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."
In a previous article you mentioned something similar with the 95/5 formula. I am not clear what qualifies as the 1% of the surface level, and what the rest of the 99% is? It's difficult for me to accept that the life that i experience 100% of the time is only 1% of my being. Please go into more detail about what the 99% is and what the 1% is. Is everything we experience on a daily basis filed under the 1% of our being and we shouldn't really mind what happens? Or are there things that we experience (relaxation, love, friendship) which occur on the surface but are filed under the 99% of importance? I'm really confused.
It's important to remember that even the surface is part of the totality, so I am in no way dismissing the importance of that 5% (or 1%, 0.001%, 10%, whatever). It's just a matter of depth. When you look at a human being and are only aware of the surface, what you see is only a collection of labels. Whereas when you look at a human being while aware of the totality, you see/sense much more. It's almost like the difference of meeting someone online vs. face to face; the former is a bundle of abstracted labels and information, while the latter is (potentially) a much deeper and richer experience.
Now, the mind cannot possibly make sense of what it means to be aware of the totality. It's impossible to try and figure it out, and the numbers are just a method of pointing towards something that doesn't really make any logical sense. It's not at all about the numbers, or about words or explanations for that matter.
To look at some other perspectives on this:
If you're in a relatively quiet environment, close your eyes for a moment and listen. Observe that there is silence, and then there are sounds that arise and dissolve out of that stillness. The more you are aware of the silence, the more you sense its depth and how the sounds that appear in it are relatively fleeting and insignificant. In fact, consciously being aware of the silence that underlies everything is a great pointer towards sensing the depth beyond the surface level.
Yet another way of looking at it is to use the sea metaphor. The totality is the entire sea, unimaginable stillness, depth and vastness, while the world of form is the continuous play of forms on the surface of the sea, the waves. Sometimes the waves are huge and restless, sometimes it's almost completely still, but whatever happens on the surface doesn't affect the stillness in the depths.
The whole deal with the numbers and all these pointers and tricks is to trigger shifts in awareness. Although I think it's a bad idea and not worth the health risks involved, you could probably do this to some extent with mind-altering drugs also.
Regarding what you mention with relaxation, love and friendship, I would suggest that in a way these can provide glimpses of what is beyond the surface. Remember also that everything is part of the 100%, and so everything is 100% important. So let's say an orange is a 100% important, but we only see the skin of it and believe that to be 100% important, overlooking the fruit inside.
I'm not sure how to explain it any better, but remember that you don't necessarily need to understand any of it on a conceptual level. In fact, trying to work it out on that level may hinder you in gaining the deeper level of understanding, the flash of insight where it everything makes sense on a much deeper level than the thinking-mind can comprehend.
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 Articles on 12. March 2007 »
One common denominator for us human beings is that we are all looking for home in some way. We want to get to some place where we can finally come to a stop in our search, somewhere we can relax and feel at ease. We are looking for comfort and safety.
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 Notes on 13. February 2007 »
I’m sure many of you recognize the symptoms of being mentally over-stimulated; email, RSS, instant messaging, forums, blogs, podcasts, social networking services, etc., together working to create a constant stream of information that demands your attention all day every day. And we become really good at keeping up with all of it, expanding our capacity for dealing with rapidfire input of information all day long and taking pride in the ability to do everything at once.
Speaking from my own experience, all of this — let’s just lump it as information technology — has proven to be a great challenge in my spiritual practice. I spend most of my waking hours in front of a computer, and so my mind has become very good at processing information. This is a valuable skill to have these days, but also a great liability; not in and of itself, really, but rather because it amplifies the preexisting dysfunction of the mind. It speeds up our thinking, and when the mind stream gathers momentum the easier it is for the ego to play out its destructive thought patterns. The mind is only a tool, of course, but continuously feeding it more and more noise can cause it to spin out of control.
I’m going to write a more in-depth article on this, but for now I’ve made a list of potential remedies for this self-inflicted attention deficit disorder so many people are finding themselves having to deal with now. Small exercises that only require you to set aside a couple of minutes per hour, but need to be practiced diligently in order to work over the long term. The difficulty is in establishing them as habits, but once that has been done the overall effect will be much greater than the time commitment would suggest.
In order of difficulty, easiest one first:
1. Observe your breath
Consciously observing your breath, even if only for a couple of minutes, is much more effective than it sounds.
2. Listen to silence
If you are surrounded by noise all day long, and rest assured you are not the only one, try sensing the underlying silence beneath the noise. The silence out of which the noise arises, the emptiness, the stillness that is always there no matter how noisy it may appear on the surface. One method of getting closer to this is to try and notice a sound that is really far away, something barely audible (or only in your imagination, as it were).
3. Feel the aliveness within
This is about feeling your body from within, to sense the incredible aliveness in your entire body (and it is amazing once you are able to notice it). To start off with, hold out your arms and, eyes closed, ask yourself “how do I know my hands are there?”
Another way of looking at this is to move your point of ‘beingness’ from your head and into the rest of your body. Sensing yourself as being centered in the abdomen, for example, and focusing your attention on that area.
4. Stop thinking
Which is really the wrong way of saying it because you can’t really stop it, or at least not with force. It is more a conscious decision to allow thought to subside, which can with practice start to work in a way that you are able to simply stop thinking, so to speak. You step back and observe the thought stream until it fades away by itself.
The main difficulty with all of these is to simply remember to practice them. It’s so easy to get dragged into a stream of thinking, especially with these modern and information addled little minds of ours, so as long as we keep using information technology we need to be vigilant in keeping it at a certain distance.
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
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.